He was the next moment taking Carinthia’s impression of Chillon, compelled to it by an admiration that men and women have alike for shapes of strength in the mould of grace, over whose firm build a flicker of agility seems to run.  For the young soldier’s figure was visibly in its repose prompt to action as the mind’s movement.  This was her brother; her enthusiasm for her brother was explained to him.  No sooner did he have the conception of it than it plucked at him painfully; and, feeling himself physically eclipsed by the object of Carinthia’s enthusiasm, his pride of the rival counselled him to preserve the mask on what was going on within, lest it should be seen that he was also morally beaten at the outset.  A trained observation told him, moreover, that her Chillon’s correctly handsome features, despite their conventional urbanity, could knit to smite, and held less of the reserves of mercy behind them than Carinthia’s glorious barbaric ruggedness.  Her eyes, each time she looked at her brother, had, without doating, the light as of the rise of happy tears to the underlids as they had on a certain day at the altar, when ‘my lord’ was ’my husband,’—­more shyly then.  He would have said, as beautifully, but for envy of the frank, pellucid worship in that look on her proved hero.  It was the jewel of all the earth to win back to himself; and it subjected him, through his desire for it, to a measurement with her idol, in character, quality, strength, hardness.  He heard the couple pronouncing sentence of his loss by anticipation.

Why had she primed her brother to propose the council of three?  Addressing them separately, he could have been his better or truer self.  The sensation of the check imposed on him was instructive as to her craft and the direction of her wishes.  She preferred the braving of hazards and horrors beside her brother, in scorn of the advantages he could offer; and he yearned to her for despising by comparison the bribe he proposed in the hope that he might win her to him.  She was with religion to let him know the meanness of wealth.

Thus, at the edge of the debate, or contest, the young lord’s essential nobility disarmed him; and the revealing of it, which would have appealed to Carinthia and Chillon both, was forbidden by its constituent pride, which helped him to live and stood obstructing explanatory speech.

CHAPTER XLIV

BETWEEN THE EARL, THE COUNTESS AND HER BROTHER, AND OF A SILVER CROSS

Carinthia was pleased by hearing Lord Fleetwood say to her:  ’Your Madge and my Gower are waiting to have the day named for them.’

She said:  ’I respect him so much for his choice of Madge.  They shall not wait, if I am to decide.’

‘Old Mr. Woodseer has undertaken to join them.’

‘It is in Whitechapel they will be married.’

The blow that struck was not intended, and Fleetwood passed it, under her brother’s judicial eye.  Any small chance word may carry a sting for the neophyte in penitence.