So the earl said.  He had to force his familiar tone against the rebuke of her grandeur of stature; and he was for inducing her to deliver her mind, that the mountain girl’s feebleness in speech might reinstate him.  She rejoined unhesitatingly:  ’My brother would not accept aid from you, my lord.  I will take no money more than for my needs.’

‘You spoke of certain sums down in Wales.’

‘I did then.’  Her voice was dead.

‘Ah!  You must be feeling the cold North-wind here.’

‘I do not.  You may feel the cold, my lord.  Will you enter the house?’

‘Do you invite me?’

‘The house is your own.’

‘Will the mistress of the house honour me so far?’

‘I am not the mistress of the house, my lord.’

‘You refuse, Carinthia?’

’I would keep from using those words.  I have no right to refuse the entry of the house to you.’

‘If I come in?’

‘I guard my rooms.’

She had been awake, then, to the thrusting and parrying behind masked language.

‘Good.  You are quite decided, I may suppose.’

’I will leave them when I have a little money, or when I know of how I may earn some.’

‘The Countess of Fleetwood earning a little money?’

‘I can put aside your title, my lord.’

’No, you can’t put it aside while the man with the title lives, not even if you’re running off in earnest, under a dozen Welsh names.  Why should you desire to do it?  The title entitles you to the command of half my possessions.  As to the house; don’t be alarmed; you will not have to guard your rooms.  The extraordinary wild animal you—­the impression may have been produced; I see, I see.  If I were in the house, I should not be rageing at your doors; and it is not my intention to enter the house.  That is, not by right of ownership.  You have my word.’

He bowed to her, and walked to the stables.

She had the art of extracting his word from him.  The word given, she went off with it, disengaged mistress of Esslemont.  And she might have the place for residence, but a decent courtesy required that she should remain at the portico until he was out of sight.  She was the first out of sight, rather insolently.

She returned him without comment the spell he had cast on her, and he was left to estimate the value of a dirited piece of metal not in the currency, stamped false coin.  An odd sense of impoverishment chilled him.  Chilly weather was afflicting the whole country, he was reminded, and he paced about hurriedly until his horses were in the shafts.  After all, his driving away would be much more expected of him than a stay at the house where the Whitechapel Countess resided, chill, dry, talking the language of early Exercises in English, suitable to her Welshmen.  Did she ‘Owain’ them every one?

As he whipped along the drive and left that glassy stare of Esslemont behind him, there came a slap of a reflection:—­here, on the box of this coach, the bride just bursting her sheath sat, and was like warm wax to take impressions.  She was like hard stone to retain them, pretty evidently.  Like women the world over, she thinks only of her side of the case.  Men disdain to plead theirs.  Now money is offered her, she declines it.  Formerly, she made it the principal subject of her conversation.