coat, threadbare to quiet scrutiny.  She matched him beside her brother.  The dwarfed object was then observed; and it was not for a woman to measure herself beside him.  She came, however, of a powerful blood, and he was pressing her back on her resources:  without the measurement or a thought of it, she did that which is the most ordinary and the least noticed of our daily acts in civilized intercourse, she subjected him to the trial of the elements composing him, by collision with what she felt of her own; and it was because she felt them strongly, aware of her feeling them, but unaware of any conflict, that the wrestle occurred.  She flung him, pitied him, and passed on along her path elsewhere.  This can be done when love is gone.  It is done more or less at any meeting of men and men; and men and women who love not are perpetually doing it, unconsciously or sensibly.  Even in their love, a time for the trial arrives among certain of them; and the leadership is assumed, and submission ensues, tacitly; nothing of the contention being spoken, perhaps, nothing definitely known.

In Carinthia’s case, her revived enthusiasm for her brother drove to the penetration of the husband pleading to thwart its course.  His offer was wealth:  that is, luxury, amusement, ease.  The sub-audible ‘himself’ into the bargain was disregarded, not counting with one who was an upward rush of fire at the thought that she was called to share her brother’s dangers.

Chillon cordially believed the earl to be the pestilent half madman, junction with whom is a constant trepidation for the wife, when it is not a screaming plight.  He said so, and Carinthia let him retain his opinion.  She would have said it herself to support her scheme, though ‘mad’ applied to a man moving in the world with other men was not understood by her.

With Henrietta for the earl’s advocate, she was patient as the deaf rock-wall enthusiam can be against entreaties to change its direction or bid it disperse:  The ‘private band of picked musicians’ at the disposal of the Countess of Fleetwood, and Opera singers (Henrietta mentioned resonant names) hired for wonderful nights at Esslemont and Calesford or on board the earl’s beautiful schooner yacht, were no temptation.  Nor did Henrietta’s allusions to his broken appearance move his wife, except in her saying regretfully:  ‘He changes.’

On the hall table at Esslemont, a letter from his bankers informed the earl of a considerable sum of money paid in to his account in the name of Lord Brailstone.  Chumley Potts, hanging at him like a dog without a master since the death of his friend Ambrose, had journeyed down:  ‘Anxious about you,’ he said.  Anxious about or attracted by the possessor of Ambrose Mallard’s ‘clean sweeper,’ the silver-mounted small pistol; sight of which he begged to have; and to lengthened his jaw on hearing it was loaded.  A loaded pistol, this dark little one to the right