The Dame shall expose her confusions.  She really would seem to fancy that the ballad verifies the main lines of the story, which is an impossible one.  Carinthia had not the means to travel:  she was moneyless.  Every bill of her establishment was paid without stint by Mr. Howell Edwards, the earl’s manager of mines; but she had not even the means for a journey to the Gowerland rocks she longed to see.  She had none since she forced her brother to take the half of her share of their inheritance, L1400, and sent him the remainder.

Accepted by Chillon John as a loan, says Dame Gossip, and no sooner received than consumed by the pressing necessities of a husband with the Rose Beauty of England to support in the comforts and luxuries he deemed befitting.

Still the Dame leans to her opinion that ‘Carinthia Jane’ may have been seen about London:  for ‘where we have much smoke there must be fire.’  And the countess never denying an imputation not brought against her in her hearing, the ballad was unchallenged and London’s wags had it their own way.  Among the reasons why they so persistently hunted the earl, his air of a smart correctness shadowed by this new absurdity invited them, as when a spot of mud on the trimmest of countenances arrests observation:  Humour plucked at him the more for the good faith of his handsome look under the prolific little disfigurement.  Besides, a wealthy despot, with no conception of any hum around him, will have the wags in his track as surely as the flexibles in front:  they avenge his exactions.

Fleetwood was honestly unaware of ridicule in the condition of inventive mania at his heels.  Scheming, and hesitating to do, one-half of his mind was absorbed with the problem of how now to treat the mother of his boy.  Her behaviour in becoming a mother was acknowledged to be good:  the production of a boy was good—­considerate, he almost thought.  He grew so far reconciled to her as to have intimations of a softness coming on; a wish to hear her speak of the trifling kindness done to the sister of Madge in reward of kindness done to her; wishes for looks he remembered, secret to him, more his own than any possessions.  Dozens of men had wealth, some had beautiful wives; none could claim as his own that face of the look of sharp steel melting into the bridal flower, when she sprang from her bed to defend herself and recognized the intruder at her window; stood smitten:—­’It is my, husband.’  Moonlight gave the variation of her features.

And that did not appease the resentment tearing him from her, so justifiable then, as he forced himself to think, now hideous.  Glimpses of the pictures his deeds painted of him since his first meeting with this woman had to be shunned.  He threw them off; they were set down to the mystery men are.  The degrading, utterly different, back view of them teaches that Life is an irony.  If the teaching is not accepted, and we are to take the blame, can we bear to live?  Therefore, either way the irony of Life is proved.  Young men straining at thought, in the grip of their sensations, reach this logical conclusion.  They will not begin by examining the ground they stand on, and questioning whether they have consciences at peace with the steps to rearward.