A rich man’s easy smile over losses at play, merely taught his emulous troop to feel themselves poor devils in the pocket.  But Fleetwood’s contempt of Sleep was a marvel, superhuman, and accused them of an inferior vigour, hard for young men to admit by the example.  He never went to bed.  Issuing from Fortune’s hall-doors in the bright, lively, summer morning, he mounted horse and was away to the hills.  Or he took the arm of a Roman Catholic nobleman, Lord Feltre, and walked with him from the green tables and the establishment’s renowned dry still Sillery to a Papist chapel.  As it was not known that he had given his word to abjure his religion, the pious gamblers did no worse than spread an alarm and quiet it, by the citation of his character for having a try at everything.

Henrietta despatched at this period the following letter to Chillon: 

’I am with Livia to-morrow.  Janey starts for Wales to-morrow morning, a voluntary exile.  She pleaded to go back to that place where you had to leave her, promising she would not come Westward; but was persuaded.  Lady Arpington approves.  The situation was getting too terribly strained.  We met and passed my lord in the park.

’He was walking his horse-elegant cavalier that he is:  would not look on his wife.  A woman pulled by her collar should be passive; if she pulls her way, she is treated as a dog.  I see nothing else in the intention of poor Janey’s last offence to him.  There is an opposite counsel, and he can be eloquent, and he will be heard on her side.  How could she manage the most wayward when she has not an idea of ordinary men!  But, my husband, they have our tie between them; it may move him.  It subdues her—­and nothing else would have done that.  If she had been in England a year before the marriage, she would, I think, have understood better how to guide her steps and her tongue for his good pleasure.  She learns daily, very quickly:  observes, assimilates; she reads and has her comments—­would have shot far ahead of your Riette, with my advantages.

’Your uncle—­but he will bear any charge on his conscience as long as he can get the burden off his shoulders.  Do not fret, my own!  Reperuse the above—­you will see we have grounds for hope.

’He should have looked down on her!  No tears from her eyes, but her eyes were tears.  She does not rank among beautiful women.  She has her moments for outshining them—­the loveliest of spectres!  She caught at my heart.  I cannot forget her face looking up for him to look down.  A great painter would have reproduced it, a great poet have rendered the impression.  Nothing short of the greatest.  That is odd to say of one so simple as she.  But when accidents call up her reserves, you see mountain heights where mists were—­she is actually glorified.  Her friend—­I do believe a friend—­the Mr. Woodseer you are to remember meeting somewhere—­a sprained ankle—­has a dozen similes ready for what she is when pain or happiness vivify her.  Or, it may be, tender charity.  She says, that if she feels for suffering people, it is because she is the child of Chillon’s mother.  In like manner Chillon is the son of Janey’s father.