He was renowned and unrivalled as the man of stainless honour:  the one living man of his word.  He had never broken it—­never would.  There was his distinction among the herd.  In that, a man is princely above princes.  The nobility of Edward Russett, Earl of Fleetwood, surpassed the nobility of common nobles.  But, by all that is holy, he pays for his distinction.

The creature beside him is a franked issue of her old pirate of a father in one respect—­nothing frightens her.  There she sits; not a screw of her brows or her lips; and the coach rocked, they were sharp on a spill midway of the last descent.  It rocks again.  She thinks it scarce worth while to look up to reassure him.  She is looking over the country.

‘Have you been used to driving?’ he said.

She replied:  ‘No, it is new to me on a coach.’

Carinthia felt at once how wild the wish or half expectation that he would resume the glowing communion of the night which had plighted them.

She did not this time say ‘my husband,’ still it flicked a whip at his ears.

She had made it more offensive, by so richly toning the official title just won from him as to ring it on the nerves; one had to block it or be invaded.  An anticipation that it would certainly recur haunted every opening of her mouth.

Now that it did not, he felt the gap, relieved, and yet pricked to imagine a mimicry of her tones, for the odd foreignness of the word and the sound.  She had a voice of her own besides her courage.  At the altar, her responses had their music.  No wonder:  the day was hers.  ‘My husband’ was a manner of saying ‘my fish.’

He, spoke very civilly.  ’Oblige me by telling me what name you are accustomed to answer to.’

She seemed unaware of an Arctic husband, and replied:  ’My father called me Carin—­short for Carinthia.  My mother called me Janey; my second name is Jane.  My brother Chillon says both.  Henrietta calls me Janey.’

The creature appeared dead flesh to goads.  But the name of her sister-in-law on her lips returned the stroke neatly.  She spared him one whip, to cut him with another.

‘You have not informed me which of these names you prefer.’

‘Oh, my husband, it is as you shall please.’

Fleetwood smartened the trot of his team, and there was a to-do with the rakish leaders.

Fairies of a malignant humour in former days used to punish the unhappiest of the naughty men who were not favourites, by suddenly planting a hump on their backs.  Off the bedevilled wretches pranced, and they kicked, they snorted, whinnied, rolled, galloped, outflying the wind, but not the dismal rider.  Marriage is our incubus now.  No explanation is offered of why we are afflicted; we have simply offended, or some one absent has offended, and we are handy.  The spiteful hag of power ties a wife to us; perhaps for the reason, that we behaved in the spirit of a better time by being chivalrously honourable.  Wives are just as inexplicable curses, just as ineradicable and astonishing as humps imposed on shapely backs.