?'

'They are, we may say, protected.'

'Laws and constables are poor protection for them.'

'The women we name ladies are pretty safe, as a rule.'

'My sister, then, was the exception.'

After a burning half minute the earl said: 'I have to hear it from you,
Mr. Levellier. You see me here.'

That was handsomely spoken. But Lord Fleetwood had been judged and put
aside. His opening of an old case to hint at repentance for brutality
annoyed the man who had let him go scathless for a sister's sake.

'The grounds of your coming, my lord, are not seen; my time is short.'

'I must, I repeat, be consulted with regard to Lady Fleetwood's
movements.'

'My sister does not acknowledge your claim.'

'The Countess of Fleetwood's acts involve her husband.'

'One has to listen at times to what old sailors call Caribbee!' Chillon
exclaimed impatiently, half aloud. 'My sister received your title; she
has to support it. She did not receive the treatment of a wife:--or
lady, or woman, or domestic animal. The bond is broken, as far as it
bears on her subjection. She holds to the rite, thinks it sacred. You
can be at rest as to her behaviour. In other respects, your lordship
does not exist for her.'

'The father of her child must exist for her.'

'You raise that curtain, my lord!'

In the presence of three it would not bear a shaking.

Carinthia said, in pity of his torture:--

'I have my freedom, and am thankful for it, to follow my brother, to
share his dangers with him. That is more to me than luxury and the
married state. I take only my freedom.'

'Our boy? You take the boy?'

'My child is with my sister Henrietta!

'Where?'

'We none know yet.'

'You still mistrust me?'

Her eyes were on a man that she had put from her peaceably; and she
replied, with sweetness in his ears, with shocks to a sinking heart, 'My
lord, you may learn to be a gentle father to the child. I pray you may.
My brother and I will go. If it is death for us, I pray my child may
have his father, and God directing his father.'

Her speech had the clang of the final.

'Yes, I hope--if it be the worst happening, I pray, too,' said he, and
drooped and brightened desperately: 'But you, too, Carinthia, you could
aid by staying, by being with the boy and me. Carinthia!' he clasped her
name, the vapour left to him of her: 'I have learnt learnt what I am,
what you are; I have to climb a height to win back the wife I threw
away. She was unknown