is
father's dishes to an epicure. What he envied was, the worthy old man's
heart of feeling for others: his feeling at present for the girl Sarah
Winch and her sister Madge, who had not been heard of since she started
for the fight. Mr. Woodseer had written to her relatives at the Wells,
receiving no consolatory answer.

He was relieved at last; and still a little perplexed. Madge had
returned, he informed Gower. She was well, she was well in health; he had
her assurances that she was not excited about herself.

'She has brought a lady with her, a great lady to lodge with her. She has
brought the Countess of Fleetwood to lodge with her.'

Gower heard those words from his father; and his father repeated them. To
the prostrate worshipper of the Countess of Fleetwood, they were a blow
on the head; madness had set in here, was his first recovering thought,
or else a miracle had come to pass. Or was it a sham Countess of
Fleetwood imposing upon the girl? His father was to go and see the great
lady, at the greengrocer's shop; at her request, according to Madge.
Conjectures shot their perishing tracks across a darkness that deepened
and made shipwreck of philosophy. Was it the very Countess of Fleetwood
penitent for her dalliance with the gambling passion, in feminine need of
pastor's aid, having had report from Madge of this good shepherd? His
father expressed a certain surprise; his countenance was mild. He
considered it a merely strange occurrence.

Perhaps, in a crisis, a minister of religion is better armed than a
philosopher. Gower would not own that, but he acknowledged the evidences,
and owned to envy; especially when he accompanied his father to the
greengrocer's shop, and Mr. Woodseer undisturbedly said:

'Here is the place.' The small stuffed shop appeared to grow portentously
cavernous and waveringly illumined.

CHAPTER XIX

THE GIRL MADGE

Customers were at the counter of the shop, and these rational figures,
together with the piles of cabbages, the sacks of potatoes, the pale
small oranges here and there, the dominant smell of red herrings, denied
the lurking of an angelical presence behind them.

Sarah Winch and a boy served at the counter. Sarah led the Mr. Woodseers
into a corner knocked off the shop and called a room. Below the top bars
of a wizened grate was a chilly fire. London's light came piecemeal
through a smut-streaked window. If the wonderful was to occur, this was
the place to heigh