Perhaps, in a crisis, a minister of religion is better armed than a philosopher.  Gower would not own that, but he acknowledged the evidences, and owned to envy; especially when he accompanied his father to the greengrocer’s shop, and Mr. Woodseer undisturbedly said: 

‘Here is the place.’  The small stuffed shop appeared to grow portentously cavernous and waveringly illumined.

CHAPTER XIX

THE GIRL MADGE

Customers were at the counter of the shop, and these rational figures, together with the piles of cabbages, the sacks of potatoes, the pale small oranges here and there, the dominant smell of red herrings, denied the lurking of an angelical presence behind them.

Sarah Winch and a boy served at the counter.  Sarah led the Mr. Woodseers into a corner knocked off the shop and called a room.  Below the top bars of a wizened grate was a chilly fire.  London’s light came piecemeal through a smut-streaked window.  If the wonderful was to occur, this was the place to heighten it.

‘My son may be an intruder,’ Mr. Woodseer said.  ’He is acquainted with a Lord Fleetwood . . .’

‘Madge will know, sir,’ replied Sarah, and she sent up a shrill cry for Madge from the foot of the stairs.

The girl ran down swiftly.  She entered listening to Sarah, looking at Gower; to whom, after a bob and pained smile where reverence was owing, she said, ’Can you tell me, sir, please, where we can find Lord Fleetwood now?’

Gower was unable to tell.  Madge turned to Mr. Woodseer, saying soon after:  ’Oh, she won’t mind; she’ll be glad, if he knows Lord Fleetwood.  I’ll fetch her.’

The moments were of the palpitating order for Gower, although his common sense lectured the wildest of hearts for expecting such a possibility as the presence of his lofty lady here.

And, of course, common sense proved to be right:  the lady was quite another.  But she struck on a sleeping day of his travels.  Her face was not one to be forgotten, and to judge by her tremble of a smile, she remembered him instantly.

They were soon conversing, each helping to paint the scene of the place where they had met.

‘Lord Fleetwood has married me,’ she said.

Gower bent his head; all stood silent.

‘May I?’ said Madge to her.  ’It is Lord Fleetwood’s wedded wife, sir.  He drove her from her uncle’s, on her wedding day, the day of a prize-fight, where I was; he told me to wait on his lady at an inn there, as I ’ve done and will.  He drove away that evening, and he hasn’t’—­the girl’s black eyebrows worked:  ’I’ve not seen him since.  He’s a great nobleman, yes.  He left his lady at the inn, expenses paid.  He left her with no money.  She stayed on till her heart was breaking.  She has come to London to find him.  She had to walk part of the way.  She has only a change of linen we brought in a parcel.  She’s a stranger to England:  she knows nobody in London.  She had no place to come to but this poor hole of ours she ’s so good as let welcome her.  We can’t do better, and it ’s no use to be ashamed.  She ‘s not a lady to scorn poor people.’