Next day there were the two gentlemen to conduct the lady and her maid; and Taffy the first walks beside the countess; and that girl Madge trudges along with no other than my lord’s Mr. Woodseer, chattering like a watering-can on a garden-bed:  deuce a glance at Kit Ines.  How can she keep it up and the gentleman no more than nodding?  How does he enjoy playing second fiddle with the maid while Mr. tall brown-face Taffy violins it to her ladyship a stone’s throw in front?  Ines had less curiosity to know the object of Mr. Woodseer’s appearance on the scene.  Idle, unhandsomely treated, and a cave of the yawns, he merely commented on his observations.

‘Yes, there he is, don’t look at him,’ Madge said to Gower; ’and whatever he’s here for, he has a bad time of it, and rather more than it’s pleasant for him to think over, if a slave to a “paytron” thinks at all.  I won’t judge him; my mistress is bitten with the fear for the child, worse than ever.  And the earl, my lord, not coming, and he wanting her to move again, seems to her he durstn’t do it here and intends to snap at the child on the road.  She-’s forced to believe anything of such a husband and father.  And why does he behave so?  I can’t spell it.  He’s kind to my Sally—­you’ve seen the Piccadilly shop?—­because she was . . . she did her best in love and duty for my lady.  And behaves like a husband hating his wife’s life on earth!  Then he went down with good Mr. Woodseer, and called on Sally, pretending to inquire, after she was kidnapped by that Kit Ines acting to please his paytron, he must be shown up to the room where she slept, and stands at the door and peeps in, Sally’s letter says, and asks if he may enter the room.  He went to the window looking on the chimneys she used to see, and touched an ornament over the fireplace, called grandfather’s pigtail case—­he was a sailor; only a ridiculous piece of china, that made my lady laugh about the story of its holding a pigtail.  But he turns it over because she did—­Sally told him.  He couldn’t be pretending when he bought the beautiful shop and stocked it for Sally.  He gets her lots of customers; and no rent to pay till next Michaelmas a year.  She’s a made woman through him.  He said to her, he had heard from Mr. Woodseer the Countess of Fleetwood called her sister; he shook her hand.’

‘The Countess of Fleetwood called both of you her sisters, I think,’ said Gower.

‘I’m her servant.  I’d rather serve her than have a fortune.’

‘You were born with a fortune one would like to have a nibble at, Madge.’

‘I can’t lay hand on it, then.’

‘It’s the capacity for giving, my dear.’

’Please, Mr. Gower, don’t say that; you’ll make me cry.  He keeps his wife so poor she hasn’t a shilling of her own; she wearies about her brother; she can’t help.  He can spend hundreds on my Sally for having been good to her, in our small way—­it’s a fairy tale; and he won’t hear of money for his wife, except that she’s never to want for anything it can buy.’