t on the thing he wants.' Fleetwood set his face at Gower
with cutting heartiness. 'In love, you say, and Madge: and mean it to
be the holy business! Well, poor old Chummy always gave you credit for
knowing how to play your game. She has given proof she 's a good girl.
I don't see why it shouldn't end well. That attack on the Welshman's the
bad lookout. Explained, if you like, but women's impressions won't
get explained away. We must down on our knees or they. Her ladyship
attentive at all to affairs of the house?'

'Every day with Queeney; at intervals with Leddings.'

'Excellent! You speak like a fellow recording the devout observances
of a great dame with her minor and superior, ecclesiastical comforters.
Regular at church?'

'Her ladyship goes.'

'A woman without religion, Gower Woodseer, is a weed on the water, or
she's hard as nails. We shall see. Generally, Madge and the youngster
parade the park at this hour. I drive round to the stables. Go in and
offer your version of that rascally dog's trick. It seems the nearest we
can come at. He's a sot, and drunken dogs 'll do anything. I've had him
on my hands, and I've got the stain of him.'

They trotted through Esslemont Park gates. 'I've got that place,
Calesford, on my hands, too,' the earl said, suddenly moved to a liking
for his Kentish home.

He and Gower were struck by a common thought of the extraordinary
burdens his indulgence in impulses drew upon him. Present circumstances
pictured to Gower the opposing weighed and matured good reason for his
choosing Madge, and he complimented himself in his pity for the earl.
But Fleetwood, as he reviewed a body of acquaintances perfectly free
from the wretched run in harness, though they had their fits and their
whims, was pushed to the conclusion that fatalism marked his particular
course through life. He could not hint at such an idea to the
unsympathetic fellow, or rather, the burly antagonist to anything of the
sort, beside him. Lord Feltre would have understood and appreciated
it instantly. Where is aid to be had if we have the Fates against us?
Feltre knew the Power, he said; was an example of 'the efficacy of
supplications'; he had been 'fatally driven to find the Power,' and had
found it--on the road to Rome, of course: not a delectable road for an
English nobleman, except that the noise of another convert in pilgrimage
on it would deal our English world a lively smack, the very stroke that
heavy body want