of it to be said? The 'more' was due to her, and should partly be said
at their next meeting for the no further separating; or else he would
vow in his heart to spread it out over a whole life's course of wakeful
devotion, with here and there a hint of his younger black nature. Better
that except for a desire seizing him to make sacrifice of the demon he
had been, offer him up hideously naked to her mercy. But it was a thing
to be done by hints, by fits, by small doses. She could only gradually
be brought to the comprehension of how the man or demon found
indemnification under his yoke of marriage in snatching her, to torment,
perhaps betray; and solace for the hurt to his pride in spreading a
snare for the beautiful Henrietta. A confession! It could be to none but
the priest.

Knowledge of Carinthia would have urged him to the confession
straightway. In spite of horror, the task of helping to wash a black
soul white would have been her compensation for loss of companionship
with her soldier brother. She would have held hot iron to the rabid
wound and come to a love of the rescued sufferer.

It seemed to please her when he spoke of Mr. Rose Mackrell's
applications to get back his volume of her father's Book of Maxims.

'There is mine,' she said.

For the sake of winning her quick gleam at any word of the bridal
couple, he conjured a picture of her Madge and his Gower, saying: 'That
marriage--as you will learn--proves him honest from head to foot; as she
is in her way, too.'

'Oh, she is,' was the answer.

'We shall be driving down to them very soon, Carinthia.'

'It will delight them to see either of us, my lord.'

'My lady, adieu until I am over with this Calesford,' he gestured, as in
fetters.

She spared him the my lording as she said adieu, sensitive as she was,
and to his perception now.

Lady Arpington had a satisfactory two minutes with him before he left
the house. London town, on the great day at Calesford, interchanged
communications, to the comforting effect, that the Countess of Fleetwood
would reign over the next entertainment.

CHAPTER XLVII. THE LAST: WITH A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME

It is of seemingly good augury for the cause of a suppliant man, however
little for the man himself, when she who has much to pardon can depict
him in a manner that almost smiles, not unlike a dandling nurse the
miniature man-child sobbing off to sleep after a frenzy; an example of a
genus framed for