itle. He craved the presence of the
magician who dropped illumination with a single word; wholesomer to
think of than the whole body of those Ixionides--not bad fellows, here
and there, he reflected, tolerantly, half laughing at some of their
clownish fun. Gower Woodseer and he had not quarrelled? No, they had
merely parted at one of the crossways. The plebeian could teach that son
of the, genuflexions, Lord Feltre, a lesson in manners. Woodseer was
the better comrade and director of routes. Into the forest, up on the
heights; and free, not locked; and not parroting day and night, but
quick for all that the world has learnt and can tell, though two-thirds
of it be composed of Ixionides: that way lies wisdom, and his index was
cut that way.

Arrived in town, he ran over the headings of his letters, in no degree
anxious for a communication from Wales. There was none. Why none?

She might as well have scrawled her announcement of an event pleasing
to her, and, by the calculation, important to him, if not particularly
interesting. The mother's wifeish lines would, perhaps, have been tested
in a furnace. He smarted at the blank of any, of even two or three
formal words. She sulked? 'I am not a fallen lamb!' he said. Evidently
one had to be a shivering beast in trouble, to excite her to move a
hand.

Through so slight a fissure as this piece of discontent cracked in him,
the crowd of his grievances with the woman rushed pell-mell, deluging
young shoots of sweeter feelings. She sulked! If that woman could not
get the command, he was to know her incapable of submission. After
besmutting the name she had filched from him, she let him understand
that there was no intention to repent. Possibly she meant war. In which
case a man must fly, or stand assailed by the most intolerable of vulgar
farces;--to be compared to a pelting of one on the stage.

The time came for him to knock at doors and face his public.

CHAPTER XXVIII. BY CONCESSIONS TO MISTRESS GOSSIP A FURTHER INTRUSION IS
AVERTED

Livia welcomed him, with commiserating inquiry behind her languid
eyelids. 'You have all the latest?' it said.

He struck on the burning matter.

'You wish to know the part you have to play, ma'am.' 'Tell me, Russett.'

'You will contradict nothing.'

Her eyebrows asked, 'It means?'

'You have authority from me to admit the facts.'

'They are facts?' she remarked.

'Women love teasing round certain facts, apparently; like the