Both Chillon and Carinthia, it is probable, might have been stirred to deeper than compassion, had the proud young nobleman taken them into his breast to the scouring of it; exposing the grounds of his former brutality, his gradual enlightenment, his ultimate acknowledgement of the pricelessness of the woman he had won to lose her.  An imploring of forgiveness would not have been necessary with those two, however great their—­or the woman’s—­astonishment at the revelation of an abysmal male humanity.  A complete exposure of past meanness is the deed of present courage certain of its reward without as well as within; for then we show our fellows that the slough is cast.  But life is a continuous fight; and members of the social world display its degree of civilization by fighting in armour; most of them are born in it; and their armour is more sensitive than their skins.  It was Fleetwood’s instinct of his inability to fling it off utterly which warned him of his loss of the wife, whose enthusiasm to wait on her brother in danger might have subsided into the channel of duty, even tenderness, had he been able resolutely to strip himself bare.  This was the further impossible to him, because of a belief he now imposed upon himself, to cover the cowardly shrinking from so extreme a penitential act, that such confessions are due from men to the priest only, and that he could confess wholly and absolutely to the priest—­to heaven, therefore, under seal, and in safety, but with perfect repentance.

So, compelled to keep his inner self unknown, he fronted Chillon; courteously, in the somewhat lofty seeming of a guarded manner, he requested audience for a few minutes; observing the princely figure of the once hated man, and understanding Henrietta’s sheer womanly choice of him; Carinthia’s idolatry, too, as soon as he had spoken.  The man was in his voice.

Chillon said:  ’It concerns my sister, I have to think.  In that case, her wish is to be present.  Your lordship will shorten the number of minutes for the interview by permitting it.’

Fleetwood encountered Carinthia’s eyes.  They did not entreat or defy.  They seconded her brother, and were a civil shining naught on her husband.  He bowed his head, constrained, feeling heavily the two to one.

She replied to the look:  ’My brother and I have a single mind.  We save time by speaking three together, my lord.’

He was led into the long room of the workshop, where various patterns of muskets, rifles, pistols, and swords were stars, crosses, wedges, over the walls, and a varnished wooden model of a piece of cannon occupied the middle place, on a block.