He was in this wrestle, under a placid demeanour, for several days, hearing the shouts of Whitechapel Kit’s victory, and hearing of Sarah Winch’s anxiety on account of her sister Madge; unaffected by sounds of joy or grief, in his effort to produce a supple English, with Baden’s Madonna for sole illumination of his darkness.  To her, to the illimitable gold-mist of perspective and the innumerable images the thought of her painted for him, he owed the lift which withdrew him from contemplation of himself in a very disturbing stagnant pool of the wastes; wherein often will strenuous youth, grown faint, behold a face beneath a scroll inscribed Impostor.  All whose aim was high have spied into that pool, and have seen the face.  His glorious lady would not let it haunt him.

The spell she cast had likewise power to raise him clean out of a neighbourhood hinting Erebus to the young man with thirst for air, solitudes, and colour.  Scarce imaginable as she was, she reigned here, in the idea of her, more fixedly than where she had been visible; as it were, by right of her being celestially removed from the dismal place.  He was at the same time not insensible to his father’s contented ministrations among these homes of squalor; they pricked the curiosity, which was in the youthful philosopher a form of admiration.  For his father, like all Welshmen, loved the mountains.  Yet here he lived, exhorting, ministering, aiding, supported up to high good cheer by some, it seemed, superhuman backbone of uprightness;—­his religious faith?  Well, if so, the thing might be studied.  But things of the frozen senses, lean and hueless things, were as repellent to Gower’s imagination as his father’s dishes to an epicure.  What he envied was, the worthy old man’s heart of feeling for others:  his feeling at present for the girl Sarah Winch and her sister Madge, who had not been heard of since she started for the fight.  Mr. Woodseer had written to her relatives at the Wells, receiving no consolatory answer.

He was relieved at last; and still a little perplexed.  Madge had returned, he informed Gower.  She was well, she was well in health; he had her assurances that she was not excited about herself.

’She has brought a lady with her, a great lady to lodge with her.  She has brought the Countess of Fleetwood to lodge with her.’

Gower heard those words from his father; and his father repeated them.  To the prostrate worshipper of the Countess of Fleetwood, they were a blow on the head; madness had set in here, was his first recovering thought, or else a miracle had come to pass.  Or was it a sham Countess of Fleetwood imposing upon the girl?  His father was to go and see the great lady, at the greengrocer’s shop; at her request, according to Madge.  Conjectures shot their perishing tracks across a darkness that deepened and made shipwreck of philosophy.  Was it the very Countess of Fleetwood penitent for her dalliance with the gambling passion, in feminine need of pastor’s aid, having had report from Madge of this good shepherd?  His father expressed a certain surprise; his countenance was mild.  He considered it a merely strange occurrence.