‘Tell me—­I solve?’ he said . . . .

Henrietta spied the donkey-basket bearing the two little ones.

‘Yes, I hope so—­on our way down,’ she made answer.  ’I want you to see the pair of love-birds in a nest.’

The boy and girl were seen lying side by side, both fast asleep; fair-haired girl, dark-haired boy, faced to one another.

‘Temper?’ said Fleetwood, when he had taken observation of them.

‘Very imperious—­Mr. Boy!’ she replied, straightening her back under a pretty frown, to convey the humour of the infant tyrant.

The father’s mind ran swiftly on a comparison of the destinies of the two children, from his estimate of their parents; many of Gower Woodseer’s dicta converging to reawaken thoughts upon Nature’s laws, which a knowledge of his own nature blackened.  He had to persuade himself that this child of his was issue of a loving union; he had to do it violently, conjuring a vivid picture of the mother in bud, and his recognition of her young charm; the pain of keeping to his resolve to quit her, lest she should subjugate him and despoil him of his wrath; the fatalism in his coming and going; the romantic freak it had been,—­a situation then so clearly wrought, now blurred past comprehension.  But there must have been love, or some love on his part.  Otherwise he was bound to pray for the mother to predominate in the child, all but excluding its father.

Carinthia’s image, as a result, ascended sovereignty, and he hung to it.

For if we are human creatures with consciences, nothing is more certain than that we make our taskmasters of those to whom we have done a wrong, the philosopher says.  Between Lord Feltre and Gower Woodseer, influenced pretty equally by each of them, this young nobleman was wakening to the claims of others—­Youth’s infant conscience.  Fleetwood now conceived the verbal supplication for his wife’s forgiveness involved in the act of penance; and verbal meant abject; with him, going so far, it would mean naked, precise, no slurring.  That he knew, and a tremor went over him.  Women, then, are really the half of the world in power as much as in their number, if men pretend to a step above the savage.  Or, well, his wife was a power.

He had forgotten the puzzle spoken of by Henrietta, when she used the word again and expressed her happiness in the prospect before them—­ caused by his presence, of course.

’You are aware, my dear lord, Janey worships her brother.  He was defeated, by some dastardly contrivance, in a wager to do wonderful feats—­for money! money! money! a large stake.  How we come off our high horses!  I hadn’t an idea of money before I was married.  I think of little else.  My husband has notions of honour; he engaged himself to pay a legacy of debts; his uncle would not pay debts long due to him.  He was reduced to the shift of wagering on his great strength and skill.  He could have done it.  His enemy