an invitation to devilry. Gower's idea of the
story of Carinthia inclined to charge Lord Fleetwood with every possible
false dealing. He then quashed the charge, and decided to wait for
information.

At the second of the aristocratic Clubs of London's West, into which he
stepped like an easy member, the hall-porter did not examine his clothing
from German hat to boots, and gave him Lord Fleetwood's town address. He
could tell Madge at night by the door of the shuttered shop, that Lord
Fleetwood had gone down to Wales.

'It means her having to wait,' she said. 'The minister has been to the
coach-office, to order up her box from that inn. He did it in his name;
they can't refuse; no money's owing. She must have a change. Sally has
fifteen pounds locked up in case of need.'

Sally's capacity and economy fetched the penniless philosopher a slap.

'You've taken to this lady,' he said.

'She held my hand, while Kit Ines was at his work; and I was new to her,
and a prize-fighter's lass, they call me:--upon the top of that
nobleman's coach, where he made me sit, behind her, to see the fight; and
she his wedded lady that morning. A queer groom. He may keep Kit Ines
from drink, he's one of you men, and rides over anything in his way. I
can't speak about it; I could swear it before a judge, from what I know.
Those Rundles at that inn don't hear anything it suits him to do. All the
people down in those parts are slaves to him. And I thought he was a real
St. George before,--yes, ready I was to kiss the ground his feet crossed.
If you could, it's Chinningfold near where Admiral Fakenham lives, down
Hampshire way. Her friends ought to hear what's happened to her. They'll
find her in a queer place. She might go to the minister's. I believe
she's happier with us girls.'

Gower pledged his word to start for Chinningfold early as the light next
day. He liked the girl the better, in an amicable fashion, now that his
nerves had got free of the transient spell of her kettle tone--the hardly
varied one note of a heart boiling with sisterly devotion to a misused
stranger of her sex;--and, after the way of his race, imagination sprang
up in him, at the heels of the quieted senses, releasing him from the
personal and physical to grasp the general situation and place the
protagonist foremost.

He thought of Carinthia, with full vision of her. Some wrong had been
done, or some violation of the right, to guess from the girl Madge's
molten