ce to all of us. You are acquainted with the lady, sir.
Would you call her a red-haired girl?'

'Red-gold of the ballads; chestnut-brown, with threads of fire.'

'She has the eyes for a man to swear by. I feel the loss of her, I can
tell you. She was wine and no penalty to me. Is she much broken under
it?--if I 'm to credit... I suppose I must. It floors me.'

Admiral Baldwin's frosty stare returned on him. Gower caught an image of
it, as comparable, without much straining, to an Arctic region smitten
by the beams.

'Nothing breaks her courage,' he said.

'To be sure, my poor dear! Who could have guessed when she left my house
she was on her way to a prizefight and a greengrocer's in Whitechapel.
But the dog's not mad, though his bite 's bad; he 's an eccentric
mongrel. He wants the whip; ought to have had it regularly from his
first breeching. He shall whistle for her when he repents; and he will,
mark me. This gout here will be having a snap at the vitals if I don't
start to-night. Oblige me, half a minute.'

The admiral stretched his hand for an arm to give support, stood,
and dropped into the chair, signifying a fit of giddiness in the word
'Head.'

Before the stupor had passed, Mrs. Carthew entered, anxious lest the
admittance of a messenger of evil to her invalid should have been an
error of judgement. The butler had argued it with her. She belonged
to the list of persons appointed to cut life's thread when it strains,
their general kindness being so liable to misdirection.

Gower left the room and went into the garden. He had never seen a death;
and the admiral's peculiar pallor intimated events proper to days of
cold mist and a dripping stillness. How we go, was the question among
his problems:--if we are to go! his youthful frame insistingly added.

The fog down a wet laurel-walk contracted his mind with the chilling of
his blood, and he felt that he would have to see the thing if he was to
believe in it. Of course he believed, but life throbbed rebelliously,
and a picture of a desk near a lively fire-grate, books and pen and
paper, and a piece of writing to be approved of by the Hesper of ladies,
held ground with a pathetic heroism against the inevitable. He got
his wits to the front by walking faster; and then thought of the young
countess and the friend she might be about to lose. She could number her
friends on her fingers. Admiral Fakenham's exclamations of the name of
the place where she now was