‘My lady walks with a good stick.’

Fleetwood weighed the chances; beheld her figure attacked, Amazonian.

‘And tell me, my dear—­Kit?’

I don’t see more of Kit Ines.’

‘What has the fellow done?’

‘I’d like him to let me know why he was dismissed.’

‘Ah.  He kept silent on that point.’

‘He let out enough.’

’You’ve punished him, if he’s to lose a bonny sweetheart, poor devil!  Your sister Sally sends you messages?’

‘We’re both of us grateful, my lord.’

He lifted the thin veil from John Edward Russett’s face with a loveless hand.

’You remember the child bitten by a dog down in Wales.  I have word from my manager there.  Poor little wretch has died—­died raving.’

Madge’s bosom went shivering up and sank.  ’My lady was right.  She’s not often wrong.’

‘She’s looking well?’ said the earl, impatient with her moral merits:—­and this communication from Wales had been the decisive motive agent in hurrying him at last to Esslemont.  The next moment he heard coolly of the lady’s looking well.  He wanted fervid eulogy of his wife’s looks, if he was to hear any.

CHAPTER XXXVI

BELOW THE SURFACE AND ABOVE

The girl was counselled by the tremor of her instincts to forbear to speak of the minor circumstance, that her mistress had, besides a good stick, a good companion on the road to Croridge:  and she rejoiced to think her mistress had him, because it seemed an intimation of justice returning upon earth.  She was combative, a born rebel against tyranny.  She weighed the powers, she felt to the worth of the persons coming into her range of touch:  she set her mistress and my lord fronting for a wrestle, and my lord’s wealth went to thin vapour, and her mistress’s character threw him.  More dimly, my lord and the Welsh gentleman were put to the trial:  a tough one for these two men.  She did not proclaim the winner, but a momentary flutter of pity in the direction of Lord Fleetwood did as much.  She pitied him; for his presence at Esslemont betrayed an inclination; he was ignorant of his lady’s character, of how firm she could be to defy him and all the world, in her gratitude to the gentleman she thought of as her true friend, smiled at for his open nature,—­called by his Christian name.

The idea of a piece of information stinging Lord Fleetwood, the desire to sting, so as to be an instrument of retribution (one of female human nature’s ecstasies); and her, abstaining, that she, might not pain the lord who had been generous to her sister Sally, made the force in Madge’s breast which urges to the gambling for the undeveloped, entitled prophecy.  She kept it low and felt it thrill.