Strangest of fancies, most unphilosophically, Gower conceived a woman’s love as that which would bestow the gift upon a man so bare of it as he.  Where was the woman?  He embraced the idea of the sex, and found it resolving to a form of one.  He stood humbly before the one, and she waned into swarms of her sisters.  So did she charge him with the loving of her sex, not her.  And could it be denied, if he wanted a woman’s love just to give him a style?  No, not that, but to make him feel proud of himself.  That was the heart’s way of telling him a secret in owning to a weakness.  Within it the one he had thought of forthwith obtained her lodgement.  He discovered this truth, in this roundabout way, and knew it a truth by the warm fireside glow the contemplation of her cast over him.

Dining alone, as he usually had to do, he was astonished to see the earl enter his room.

‘Ah, you always make the right choice!’ Fleetwood said, and requested him to come to the library when he had done eating.

Gower imagined an accident.  A metallic ring was in the earl’s voice.

One further mouthful finished dinner, for Gower was anxious concerning the ladies.  He joined the earl and asked.

‘Safe.  Oh yes.  We managed to keep it from them,’ said Fleetwood.  ’Nothing particular, perhaps you’ll think.  Poor devil of a fellow!  Father and mother alive, too!  He did it out of hearing, that ’a one merit.  Mallard:  Ambrose Mallard.  He has blown his brains out.’

Seated plunged in the armchair, with stretched legs and eyes at the black fire-grate, Fleetwood told of the gathering under the tent, and Mallard seen, seen drinking champagne; Mallard no longer seen, not missed.

’He killed himself three fields off.  He must have been careful to deaden the sound.  Small pocket-pistol hardly big enough to—­but anything serves.  Couple of brats came running up to Chummy Potts:—­“Gentleman’s body bloody in a ditch.”  Chummy came to me, and we went.  Clean dead; —­in the mouth, pointed up; hole through the top of the skull.  We’re crockery! crockery!  I had to keep Chummy standing.  I couldn’t bring him back to our party.  We got help at a farm; the body lies there.  And that’s not the worst.  We found a letter to me in his pocket pencilled his last five minutes.  I don’t see what he could have done except to go.  I can’t tell you more.  I had to keep my face, rowing and driving back.  “But where is Mr. Potts?  Where can Mr. Mallard be?” Queer sensation, to hear the ladies ask!  Give me your hand.’

The earl squeezed Gower’s hand an instant; and it was an act unknown for him to touch or bear a touch; it said a great deal.