The plot—­formless plot—­to get release by the sacrifice or at least a crucial temptation of the woman, that should wash his blood clean of her image, had a shade of the devilish, he acknowledged; and the apology offered no improvement of its aspect.  She might come out of the trial triumphant.  And benefit for himself, even a small privilege, even the pressure of her hand, he not only shrank from the thought of winning,-he loathed the thought.  He was too delicate over the idea of the married woman whom he fancied he loved in her maidenhood.  Others might press her hand, lead her the dance:  he simply wanted his release.  She had set him on fire; he conceived a method for trampling the remaining sparks and erasing stain and scars; that was all.  Henrietta rejected her wealthy suitor:  she might some day hence be seen crawling abjectly to wealth, glad of a drink from the cup it holds, intoxicated with the draught.  An injured pride could animate his wealth to crave solace of such a spectacle.

Devilish, if you like.  He had expiated the wickedness in Cistercian seclusion.  His wife now drove him to sin again.

She had given him a son.  That fluted of home and honourable life.  She had her charm, known to him alone.

But how, supposing she did not rub him to bristle with fresh irritations, how go to his wife while Henrietta held her throne?  Consideration was due to her until she stumbled.  Enough if she wavered.  Almost enough is she stood firm as a statue in the winds, and proved that the first page of her was a false introduction.  The surprising apparition of a beautiful woman with character; a lightly-thrilled, pleasure-loving woman devoted to her husband or protected by her rightful self-esteem, would loosen him creditably.  It had to be witnessed, for faith in it.  He reverenced our legendary good women, and he bowed to noble deeds; and he ascribed the former to poetical creativeness, the latter operated as a scourging to his flesh to yield its demoniacal inmates.  Nothing of the kind was doing at present.

Or stay:  a studious re-perusal of Gower Woodseer’s letter enriched a little incident.  Fleetwood gave his wife her name of Carinthia when he had read deliberately and caught the scene.

Mrs. Wythan down in Wales related it to Gower.  Carinthia and Madge, trudging over the treeless hills, came on a birchen clump round a deep hollow or gullypit; precipitous, the earl knew, he had peeped over the edge in his infant days.  There at the bottom, in a foot or so of water, they espied a lamb; and they rescued the poor beastie by going down to it, one or both.  It must have been the mountain-footed one.  A man would hesitate, spying below.  Fleetwood wondered how she had managed to climb up, and carrying the lamb!  Down pitches Madge Winch to help—­they did it between them.  We who stand aloof admire stupidly.  To defend himself from admiring, he condemned the two women for the risk they ran to save a probably broken-legged little beast:  and he escaped the melting mood by forcing a sneer at the sort of stuff out of which popular ballads are woven.  Carinthia was accused of letting her adventurous impulses and sentimental female compassion swamp thought of a mother’s duties.  If both those women had broken their legs the child might have cried itself into fits for the mother, there she would have remained.