Let her not forget the fact she has
frequently impressed upon us, that he was 'the very wealthiest nobleman
of his time,' instructive to touch inside as well as out. He had his
share of brains, too. And also she should be mindful of an alteration of
English taste likely of occurrence in the remote posterity she vows she
is for addressing after she has exhausted our present hungry generation.
The posterity signified will, it is calculable, it is next to certain,
have studied a developed human nature so far as to know the composition
of it a not unequal mixture of the philosophic and the romantic, and that
credible realism is to be produced solely by an involvement of those two
elements. Or else, she may be sure, her story once out of the mouth, goes
off dead as the spirits of a vapour that has performed the stroke of
energy. She holds a surprising event in the history of 'the wealthiest
nobleman of his time,' and she would launch it upon readers unprepared,
with the reference to our mysterious and unfathomable nature for an
explanation of the stunning crack on the skull.

This may do now. It will not do ten centuries hence. For the English,
too, are a changeable people in the sight of ulterior Time.

One of the good pieces of work Lord Fleetwood could suppose he had
performed was recalled to him near the turning to his mews by the
handsome Piccadilly fruit-shop. He jumped to the pavement, merely to
gratify. Sarah Winch with a word of Madge; and being emotional just then,
he spoke of Lady Fleetwood's attachment to Madge; and he looked at Sarah
straight, he dropped his voice: 'She said, you remember, you were sisters
to her.'

Sarah remembered that he had spoken of it before. Two brilliant drops
from the deepest of woman's ready well stood in her eyes.

He carried the light of them away. They were such pure jewels of tribute
to the Carinthia now seen by him as worshipping souls of devotees offer
to their Madonna for her most glorious adornment.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR

Desiring loneliness or else Lord Feltre's company, Fleetwood had to grant
a deferred audience at home to various tradesmen, absurdly fussy about
having the house of his leased estate of Calesford furnished complete and
habitable on the very day stipulated by his peremptory orders that the
place should be both habitable and hospitable. They were right, they were
excused; grand entertainments of London had been projec