This further black mood evaporated, and like a cessation of English storm-weather bequeathed him gloom.  Ashamed of the mood, he was nevertheless directed by its final shadows to see the ruminating tramp in Gower, and in Madge the prize-fighter’s jilt:  and round about Esslemont a world eyeing an Earl of Fleetwood, who painted himself the man he was, or was held to be, by getting together such a collection, from the daughter of the Old Buccaneer to the ghastly corpse of Ambrose Mallard.  Why, clearly, wealth was the sole origin and agent of the mischief.  With somewhat less of it, he might have walked in his place among the nation’s elect, the ‘herd of the gilt horns,’ untroubled by ambitions and ideas.

Arriving thus far, he chanced to behold Gower and Madge walking over the grounds near the western plantation, and he regretted the disappearance of them, with the fellow talking hard into the girl’s ear.  Those two could think he had been of some use.  The man pretending to philosophical depth was at any rate honest; one could swear to the honesty of the girl, though she had been a reckless hussy.  Their humble little hopes and means to come to union approached, after a fashion, hymning at his ears.  Those two were pleasanter to look on than amorous lords and great ladies, who are interesting only when they are wicked.

Four days of desolate wanderings over the estate were occupied chiefly in his decreeing the fall of timber that obstructed views, and was the more imperatively doomed for his bailiff’s intercession.  ‘Sound wood’ the trees might be:  they had to assist in defraying the expense of separate establishments.  A messenger to Queeney from Croridge then announced the Countess’s return ‘for a couple of hours.’  Queeney said it was the day when her ladyship examined the weekly bills of the household.  That was in the early morning.  The post brought my lord a letter from Countess Livia, a most infrequent writer.  She had his word to pay her debts; what next was she for asking?  He shrugged, opened the letter, and stared at the half dozen lines.  The signification of them rapped on his consciousness of another heavy blow before he was perfectly intelligent.

All possible anticipation seemed here outdone:  insomuch that he held palpable evidence of the Fates at work to harass and drive him.  She was married to the young Earl of Cressett!’

Fleetwood printed the lines on his eyeballs.  They were the politely flowing feminine of a statement of the fact, which might have been in one line.  They flourished wantonly:  they were deadly blunt.  And of all men, this youngster, who struck at him through her lips with the reproach, that he had sped the good-looking little beast upon his road to ruin:—­perhaps to Ambrose Mallard’s end!

CHAPTER XLII

THE RETARDED COURTSHIP

Carinthia reached Esslemont near noon.  She came on foot, and had come unaccompanied, stick in hand, her dress looped for the roads.  Madge bustled her shorter steps up the park beside her; Fleetwood met her on the terrace.