Fleetwood’s endurance broke short.  The packed small room, the caged-monkey lingo, the wailful child, and the past and apprehended debate upon the burning of flesh, composed an intolerable torture.  He said to Edwards:  ’Go to the men; settle it with them.  We have to follow that man Wythan; no peace otherwise.  Tell the men the body of the dog must be secured for analysis.  Mad or not, it’s the same.  These Welsh mothers and grandmothers won’t allow cautery at any price.  Hark at them!’

He turned to Carinthia:  ’Your ladyship will let Mr. Edwards or Mr. Woodseer conduct you to the house where you are residing.  You don’t know these excitable people.  I wish you to leave.’

She replied softly:  ‘I stay for the doctor’s coming.’

‘Impossible for me to wait, and I can’t permit you to be here.’

‘It is life and death, and I must not be commanded.’

‘You may be proposing gratuitous agony.’

‘I would do it to my own child.’

The earl attacked Gower:  ‘Add your voice to persuade Lady Fleetwood.’

Gower said:  ‘What if I think with Lady Fleetwood?’

‘You would see her do it?’

‘Do it myself, if there was no one else’

‘This dog-all of you have gone mad,’ the earl cried.

’Griffiths may keep his head; it’s the only chance.  Take my word, these Welshwomen just listen to them won’t have it.  You ’ll find yourself in a nest of Furies.  It may be right to do, it’s folly to propose it, madness to attempt it.  And I shall be bitten if I stop here a minute longer; I’m gone; I can neither command nor influence.  I should have thought Gower Woodseer would have kept his wits.’

Fleetwood’s look fell on Madge amid the group.  Gower’s perception of her mistress through the girl’s devotion to her moved him.  He took Madge by the hand, and the sensation came that it was the next thing to pressing his wife’s.  ’You’re a loyal girl.  You have a mistress it ’s an honour to serve.  You bind me.  By the way, Ines shall run down for a minute before I go.’

‘Let him stay where he is,’’ Madge said, having bobbed her curtsey.

‘Oh, if he’s not to get a welcome!’ said the earl; and he could now fix a steadier look on his countess, who would have animated him with either a hostile face or a tender.  She had no expression of a feeling.  He bent to her formally.

Carinthia’s words were:  ‘Adieu, my lord.’

‘I have only to say, that Esslemont is ready to receive you,’ he remarked, bowed more curtly, and walked out. . .

Gower followed him.  They might as well have been silent, for any effect from what was uttered between them.  They spoke opinions held by each of them—­adverse mainly; speaking for no other purpose than to hold their positions.

‘Oh, she has courage, no doubt; no one doubted it,’ Fleetwood said, out of all relation to the foregoing.

Courage to grapple with his pride and open his heart was wanting in him.