‘We have talked:  we shall be reproved by the husband and the doctor,’ said Carinthia.

Sullen days continued and rolled over to night at the mines.  Gower’s mission was rendered absurd by the countess’s withdrawal from the castle.  He spoke of it to Mr. Wythan once, and the latter took a big breath and blew such a lord to the winds.  ’Persuade our guest to leave us, that the air may not be tainted for her husband when he comes?  He needn’t call; he’s not obliged to see her.  She’s offered Esslemont to live in?  I believe her instinct’s right—­he has designs on the child.  A little more and we shall have a mad dog in the fellow.  He doubles my work by keeping his men out.  If she were away we should hear of black doings.  Twenty dozen of his pugilists wouldn’t stop the burning.’

They agreed that persuasions need not be addressed to the countess.  She was and would remain Mr. Wythan’s guest.  As for the earl, Gower inclined to plead hesitatingly, still to plead, on behalf of a nobleman owning his influence and very susceptible to his wisdom, whose echo of a pointed saying nearly equalled the satisfaction bestowed by print.  The titled man affected the philosopher in that manner; or rather, the crude philosopher’s relish of brilliant appreciation stripped him of his robe.  For he was with Owain Wythan at heart to scorn titles which did not distinguish practical offices.  A nation bowing to them has gone to pith, for him; he had to shake himself, that he might not similarly stick; he had to do it often.  Objects elevated even by a decayed world have their magnetism for us unless we nerve the mind to wakeful repulsion.  He protested he had reason to think the earl was humanizing, though he might be killing a woman in the process.  ‘Could she wish for better?’ he asked, with at least the gravity of the undermining humourist; and he started Owain to course an idea when he remarked of Lord Fleetwood:  ’Imagine a devil on his back on a river, flying a cherub.’

Owain sparkled from the vision of the thing to wrath with it.

’Ay, but while he’s floating, his people are edging on starvation.  And I’ve a personal grievance.  I keep, you know, open hall, bread and cheese and beer, for poor mates.  His men are favouring us with a call.  We have to cart treble from the town.  If I straighten the sticks he dies to bend, it’ll be a grievance against me—­and a fig for it!  But I like to be at peace with my neighbours, and waft them “penillion” instead of dealing the “cleddyfal” of Llewellyn.’

At last the tension ceased; they had intelligence of the earl’s arrival.

His countess was little moved by it; and the reason for that lay in her imagination being absorbed.  Henrietta had posted her a journal telling of a deed of Chillon’s:  no great feat, but precious for its ’likeness to him,’ as they phrased it; that is, for the light it cast on their conception of the man.  Heading a squadron in a riotous Midland town, he stopped a charge, after fire of a shot from the mob, and galloped up the street to catch a staggering urchin to his saddle-bow, and place the mite in safety.  Then it was a simple trot of the hussars ahead; way was made for him.