’The worst is done now, Chillon.  I am silent.  Uncle is a rock.  You say we must not offend.  I have given him my whole mind.  Say where Riette is to live.’

’Her headquarters will be here, at a furnished house.  She’s, with her cousin, the Dowager.’

‘Yes.  She should be with me.’

‘She wants music.  She wants—­poor girl! let her have what comes to her.’

Their thoughts beneath their speech were like fish darting under shadow of the traffic bridge.

‘She loves music,’ said Carinthia; ’it is almost life to her, like fresh air to me.  Next month I am in London; Lady Arpington is kind.  She will give me as much of their polish as I can take.  I dare say I should feel the need of it if I were an enlightened person.’

‘For instance, did I hear “Owain,” when your Welsh friend was leaving?’ Chillon asked.

‘It was his dying wife’s wish, brother.’

‘Keep to the rules, dear.’

‘They have been broken, Chillon.’

‘Mend them.’

‘That would be a step backward.’

‘"The right one for defence!” father says.’

‘Father says, “The habit of the defensive paralyzes will."’

’"Womanizes,” he says, Carin.  You quote him falsely, to shield the sex.  Quite right.  But my sister must not be tricky.  Keep to the rules.  You’re an exceptional woman, and it would be a good argument, if you were not in an exceptional position.’

‘Owain is the exceptional man, brother.’

‘My dear, after all, you have a husband.’

’I have a brother, I have a friend, I have no—­I am a man’s wife and the mother of his child; I am free, or husband would mean dungeon.  Does my brother want an oath from me?  That I can give him.’

‘Conduct, yes; I couldn’t doubt you,’ said Chillon.  ’But “the world’s a flood at a dyke for women, and they must keep watch,” you’ve read.’

‘But Owain is not our enemy,’ said Carinthia, in her deeper tones, expressive of conviction, and not thereby assuring to hear.  ’He is a man with men, a child with women.  His Rebecca could describe him; I laugh now at some of her sayings of him; I see her mouth, so tenderly comical over her big “simpleton,” she called him, and loved him so.’

The gentleman appeared on the waste land above the house.  His very loose black suit and a peculiar roll of his gait likened him to a mourning boatswain who was jolly.  In Lord Levellier’s workshop his remarks were to the point.  Chillon’s powders for guns and blasting interested him, and he proposed to ride over from Barlings to witness a test of them.

‘You are staying at Barlings?’ Chillon said.

‘Yes; now Carinthia is at Esslemont,’ he replied, astoundingly the simpleton.

His conversation was practical and shrewd on the walk with Chillon and Carinthia down to Esslemont evidently he was a man well armed to encounter the world; social usages might be taught him.  Chillon gained a round view of the worthy simple fellow, unlikely to turn out impracticable, for he talked such good sense upon matters of business.