e yacht for Fleetwood with talk of the Wye and
the Usk, Hereford and the Malvern Hills elliptical over the plains.

'Yes,' the earl acquiesced jealously; 'we ought to have seen--tramped
every foot of our own country. That yacht of mine, there she is, and I
said I would board her and have a fly with half a dozen fellows round the
Scottish isles. We're never free to do as we like.'

'Legs are the only things that have a taste of freedom,' said Gower.

They strolled down to Howell Edwards' office at nine, Kit Ines beside the
luggage cart to the rear.

Around the office and along to the street of the cottages crowds were
chattering, gesticulating; Ines fancied the foreign jabberers inclined to
threaten. Howell Edwards at the door of his office watched them
calculatingly. The lord of their destinies passed in with him, leaving
Gower to study the features of the men, and Ines to reckon the chance of
a fray.

Fleetwood came out presently, saying to Edwards:

'That concession goes far enough. Because I have a neighbour who yields
at every step? No, stick to the principle. I've said my final word. And
here's the carriage. If the mines are closed, more's the pity: but I'm
not responsible. You can let them know if you like, before I drive off;
it doesn't matter to me.'

The carriage was ready. Gower cast a glance up the hill. Three female
figures and a pannier-donkey were visible on the descent. He nodded to
Edwards, who took the words out of his mouth. 'Her ladyship, my lord.'

She was distinctly seen, and looked formidable in definition against the
cloud. Madge and the nurse-maid Martha were the two other young women. On
they came, and the, angry man seated in the carriage could not give the
order to start. Nor could he quite shape an idea of annoyance, though he
hung to it and faced at Gower a battery of the promise to pay him for
this. Tattling observers were estimated at their small importance there,
as everywhere, by one so high above them. But the appearance of the woman
of the burlesque name and burlesque actions, and odd ascension out of the
ludicrous into a form to cast a spell, so that she commanded serious
recollections of her, disturbed him. He stepped from his carriage. Again
he had his incomprehensible fit of shyness; and a vision of the
complacent, jowled, redundant, blue-coated monarch aswing in imbecile
merriment on the signboard of the Royal Sovereign inn; constitutionally
his total opposite, yet instiga