lids." I shall keep mine open and read--read her father's
book of the Maxims; I generally find two or three at a dip to stimulate.
No wonder she venerates him. That sort of progenitor is your "permanent
aristocracy." Hard enemy. She must have some of her mother in her, too.
Abuse me to her, admit the justice of reproaches, but say, reason, good
feeling--I needn't grind at it. Say I respect her. Advise her to swallow
the injury--not intended for insult. I don't believe anything higher
than respect can be offered to a woman. No defence of me to her, but
I'll tell you, that when I undertook to keep my word with her, I plainly
said--never mind; good-night. If we meet in the morning, let this
business rest until it 's done. I must drive to help poor Chums and see
about the Inquest.'

Fleetwood nodded from the doorway. Gower was left with humming ears.

CHAPTER XL. RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS

They went to their beds doomed to lie and roam as the solitaries of a
sleepless night. They met next day like a couple emerging from sirocco
deserts, indisposed for conversation or even short companionship, much
of the night's dry turmoil in their heads. Each would have preferred
the sight of an enemy; and it was hardly concealed by them, for they
inclined to regard one another as the author of their infernal passage
through the drear night's wilderness.

Fleetwood was the civiller; his immediate prospective duties being
clear, however abhorrent. But he had inflicted a monstrous disturbance
on the man he meant in his rash, decisive way to elevate, if not
benefit. Gower's imagination, foreign to his desires and his projects,
was playing juggler's tricks with him, dramatizing upon hypotheses,
which mounted in stages and could pretend to be soberly conceivable,
assuming that the earl's wild hints overnight were a credible basis.
He transported himself to his first view of the Countess Livia, the
fountain of similes born of his prostrate adoration, close upon the
invasion and capture of him by the combined liqueurs in the giddy Batlen
lights; and joining the Arabian magic in his breast at the time with the
more magical reality now proposed as a sequel to it, he entered the land
where dreams confess they are outstripped by revelations.

Yet it startled him to hear the earl say: 'You'll get audience at ten;
I've arranged; make the most of the situation to her. I refuse to help.
I foresee it 's the only way of solving this precious puz