Lord Fleetwood, he repeated, was a black nobleman.  She brought him to say of his knowledge, that Lord Fleetwood hated, and had reason to hate, Captain Levellier.  ’Shouldn’t I hate the man took my sweetheart from me and popped me into the noose with his sister instead?’ Madge was now advised to be overcome by the smell of rum-shrub:—­a mere fancy drink tossed off by heroes in their idle moments, before they settle down to the serious business of real drinking, Kit protested.  He simulated envious admiration of known heroes, who meant business, and scorned any of the weak stuff under brandy, and went at it till the bottles were the first to give in.  For why?  They had to stomach an injury from the world or their young woman, and half-way on they shoved that young person and all enemies aside, trampled ’em.  That was what Old O’Devy signified; and many’s the man driven to his consolation by a cat of a girl, who’s like the elements in their puffs and spits at a gallant ship, that rides the tighter and the tighter for all they can do to capsize.  ’Tighter than ever I was tight I’ll be to-night, if you can’t behave.’

They fell upon the smack of words.  Kit hitched and huffed away, threatening bottles.  Whatever he had done, it was to establish the petticoated hornet in the dignity of matron of a champion light-weight’s wholesome retreat of a public-house.  A spell of his larkish hilarity was for the punishment of the girl devoted to his heroical performances, as he still considered her to be, though women are notoriously volatile, and her language was mounting a stage above the kitchen.

Madge had little sorrow for him.  She was the girl of the fiery heart, not the large heart; she could never be devoted to more than one at a time, and her mistress had all her heart.  In relation to Kit, the thought of her having sacrificed her good name to him, flung her on her pride of chastity, without the reckoning of it as a merit.  It was the inward assurance of her independence:  the young spinster’s planting of the, standard of her proud secret knowledge of what she is, let it be a thing of worth or what you will, or the world think as it may.  That was her thought.

Her feeling, the much livelier animation, was bitter grief, because her mistress, unlike herself, had been betrayed by her ignorance of the man into calling him husband.  Just some knowledge of the man!  The warning to the rescue might be there.  For nothing did the dear lady weep except for her brother’s evil fortune.  The day when she had intelligence from Mrs. Levellier of her brother’s defeat, she wept over the letter on her knees long hours.  ‘Me, my child, my brother!’ she cried more than once.  She had her suspicion of the earl then, and instantly, as her loving servant had.  The suspicion was now no dark light, but a clear day-beam to Madge.  She adopted Kit’s word of Lord Fleetwood.  ‘A black nobleman he is! he is!’ Her mistress had written like a creature begging him for money.  He did not deign a reply.  To her!  When he had seen good proof she was the bravest woman on earth; and she rushed at death to save a child, a common child; as people say.  And who knows but she saved that husband of hers, too, from bites might have sent him out of the world barking, and all his wealth not able to stop him!