Carinthia’s eyes were on the great lady’s.  Their meaning was, ’You hit my chief thought.’  They were read as her farthest thought.  For the hint of Henrietta’s weakness deadened her feelings with a reminder of warm and continued solicitations rebutted; the beautiful creature’s tortures at the idea of her exile from England.  An outwearied hopelessness expressed a passive sentiment very like indifference in the clear wide gaze.  She replied:  ’I have.  My proposal to her was Cadiz, with both our young ones.  She will not.’

And there is an end to that part of the question!  Lady Arpington interpreted it, by the gaze more than the words, under subjection of the young woman’s character.  Nevertheless, she bore away Carinthia’s consent to a final meeting with the earl at her house in London, as soon as things were settled at Croridge.  Chillon, whom she saw, was just as hard, unforgiving, careless of his country’s dearest interests; brother and sister were one heart of their one blood.  She mentioned the general impression in town, that the countess and only she could save the earl from Rome.  A flash of polite laughter was Chillon’s response.  But after her inspection of the elegant athlete, she did fancy it possible for a young wife, even for Henrietta, to bear his name proudly in his absence—­if that was worth a moment’s consideration beside the serious issues involved in her appeal to the countess; especially when the suggestion regarding young wives left unprotected, delicately conveyed to the husband, had failed of its purpose.  The handsome husband’s brows fluttered an interrogation, as if her clear-obscure should be further lighted; and it could not be done.  He weighed the wife by the measure of the sister, perhaps; or his military head had no room for either.  His callousness to the danger of his country’s disintegration, from the incessant, becoming overt, attacks of a foreign priesthood might—­an indignant great lady’s precipitation to prophecy said would—­bring chastisement on him.  She said it, and she liked Henrietta, vowing to defeat her forecast as well as she could in a land seeming forsaken by stable principles; its nobles breaking up its national church, going over to Rome, embracing the faith of the impostor Mahomet.

Gossip fed to the starvation bone of Lady Arpington’s report, until one late afternoon, memorable for the breeding heat in the van of elemental artillery, newsboys waved damp sheets of fresh print through the streets, and society’s guardians were brought to confess, in shame and gladness, that they had been growing sceptical of the active assistance of Providence.  At first the ‘Terrible explosion of gunpowder at Croridge’ alarmed them lest the timely Power should have done too much.  A day later the general agitation was pacified; Lady Arpington circulated the word ‘safe,’ and the world knew the disaster had not engulphed Lady Fleetwood’s valuable life.  She had the news by word of mouth from the