Quite by chance of things, Carinthia Jane looked on the land of her father and mother for the first time under those conditions.  There can be no harm in quoting her remark.  Only—­I have to say it—­experience causes apprehension, that we are again to be delayed by descriptions, and an exposition of feelings; taken for granted,—­of course, in a serious narrative; which it really seems these moderns think designed for a frequent arrest of the actors in the story and a searching of the internal state of this one or that one of them:  who is laid out stark naked and probed and expounded, like as in the celebrated picture by a great painter—­and we, thirsting for events as we are, are to stop to enjoy a lecture on Anatomy.  And all the while the windows of the lecture-room are rattling, if not the whole fabric shaking, with exterior occurrences or impatience for them to come to pass.  Every explanation is sure to be offered by the course events may take; so do, in mercy, I say, let us bide for them.

She thought our Island all the darker because Henrietta had induced her to talk on the boat of her mountain home and her last morning there for the walk away with Chillon John.  Soon it was to appear supernaturally bright, a very magician’s cave for brilliancy.

Now, this had happened—­and comment on it to yourselves, remembering always, that Chillon John was a lover, and a lover has his excuses, though they will not obviate the penalties he may incur; and dreadful they were.  After reading Henrietta’s letter to him, he rode out of his Canterbury quarters across the country to the borders of Sussex, where his uncle Lord Levellier lived, on the ridge of ironstone, near the wild land of a forest, Croridge the name of the place.  Now, Chillon John knew his uncle was miserly, and dreaded the prospect of having to support a niece in the wretched establishment at Lekkatts, or, as it was popularly called, Leancats; you can understand why.  But he managed to assure himself he must in duty consult with the senior and chief member of .his family on a subject of such importance as the proposal of marriage to his lordship’s niece.

The consultation was short:  ‘You will leave it to me,’ his uncle said:  and we hear of business affairs between them, involving payment of moneys due to the young man; and how, whenever he touched on them, his uncle immediately fell back on the honour of the family and Carinthia Jane’s reputation, her good name to be vindicated, and especially that there must be no delays, together with as close a reckoning as he could make of the value of Lord Fleetwood’s estates in Kent and in Staffordshire and South Wales, and his house property in London.

‘He will have means to support her,’ said the old lord, shrugging as if at his own incapacity for that burden.

The two then went to the workshops beside a large pond, where there was an island bordered with birch trees and workmen’s cottages near the main building; and that was an arsenal containing every kind of sword and lance and musket, rifle and fowling-piece and pistol, and more gunpowder than was, I believe, allowed by law.  For they were engaged in inventing a new powder for howitzer shells, of tremendous explosive power.