‘Your accident, dearest Riette—­how it happened?’ Carinthia said, enfolding her.

’Because, Janey, what have I ever been to Chillon but the good-looking thing he was proud of?  It’s gone.  Oh, the accident.  Brailstone had pushed little Corby away; he held my hand, kept imploring, he wanted the usual two minutes, and all to warn me against—­I’ve told you; and he saw Lord Fleetwood coming.  I got my hand free, and stepped back, my head spinning; and I fell.  That I recollect, and a sight of flames, like the end of the world.  I fell on one of the oil-lamps bordering the grass; my veil lighted; I had fainted; those two men saw nothing but one another; and little Sir Meeson was no help; young Lord Cressett dashed out the flames.  They brought me to my senses for a second swoon.  Livia says I woke moaning to be taken away from that hated Calesford.  It was, oh! never to see that husband of yours again.  Forgive him, if you can.  Not I. I carry the mark of him to my grave.  I have called myself “Skin-deep” ever since, day and night—­the name I deserve.’

‘We will return to Chillon together, my own,’ said Carinthia.  ’It may not be so bad.’  And in the hope that her lovely sister exaggerated a defacement leaving not much worse than a small scar, her heart threw off its load of the recent perplexities, daylight broke through her dark wood.  Henrietta brought her liberty.  How far guilty her husband might be, she was absolved from considering; sufficiently guilty to release her.  Upon that conclusion, pity for the awakened Riette shed purer tear-drops through the gratitude she could not restrain, could hardly conceal, on her sister’s behalf and her own.  Henrietta’s prompt despatch to Croridge to fetch the babes, her journey down out of a sick-room to stop Chillon’s visit to London, proved her an awakened woman, well paid for the stain on her face, though the stain were lasting.  Never had she loved Henrietta, never shown her so much love, as on the road to the deepening colours of the West.  Her sisterly warmth surprised the woeful spotted beauty with a reflection that this martial Janey was after all a woman of feeling, one whom her husband, if he came to know it and the depth of it, the rich sound of it, would mourn in sackcloth to have lost.

And he did, the Dame interposes for the final word, he mourned his loss of Carinthia Jane in sackcloth and ashes, notwithstanding that he had the world’s affectionate condolences about him to comfort him, by reason of his ungovernable countess’s misbehaviour once more, according to the report, in running away with a young officer to take part in a foreign insurrection; and when he was most the idol of his countrymen and countrywomen, which it was once his immoderate aim to be, he mourned her day and night, knowing her spotless, however wild a follower of her father’s maxims for men.  He believed—­some have said his belief was not in error—­that the woman to aid and make him man and be the star in