to make him feel proud of himself.
That was the heart's way of telling him a secret in owning to a weakness.
Within it the one he had thought of forthwith obtained her lodgement. He
discovered this truth, in this roundabout way, and knew it a truth by the
warm fireside glow the contemplation of her cast over him.

Dining alone, as he usually had to do, he was astonished to see the earl
enter his room.

'Ah, you always make the right choice!' Fleetwood said, and requested him
to come to the library when he had done eating.

Gower imagined an accident. A metallic ring was in the earl's voice.

One further mouthful finished dinner, for Gower was anxious concerning
the ladies. He joined the earl and asked.

'Safe. Oh yes. We managed to keep it from them,' said Fleetwood. 'Nothing
particular, perhaps you'll think. Poor devil of a fellow! Father and
mother alive, too! He did it out of hearing, that 'a one merit. Mallard:
Ambrose Mallard. He has blown his brains out.'

Seated plunged in the armchair, with stretched legs and eyes at the black
fire-grate, Fleetwood told of the gathering under the tent, and Mallard
seen, seen drinking champagne; Mallard no longer seen, not missed.

'He killed himself three fields off. He must have been careful to deaden
the sound. Small pocket-pistol hardly big enough to--but anything serves.
Couple of brats came running up to Chummy Potts:--"Gentleman's body
bloody in a ditch." Chummy came to me, and we went. Clean dead;--in the
mouth, pointed up; hole through the top of the skull. We're crockery!
crockery! I had to keep Chummy standing. I couldn't bring him back to our
party. We got help at a farm; the body lies there. And that's not the
worst. We found a letter to me in his pocket pencilled his last five
minutes. I don't see what he could have done except to go. I can't tell
you more. I had to keep my face, rowing and driving back. "But where is
Mr. Potts? Where can Mr. Mallard be?" Queer sensation, to hear the ladies
ask! Give me your hand.'

The earl squeezed Gower's hand an instant; and it was an act unknown for
him to touch or bear a touch; it said a great deal.

Late at night he mounted to Gower's room. The funeral of the day's
impressions had not been skaken off. He kicked at it and sunk under it as
his talk rambled. 'Add five thousand,' he commented, on the spread of
Livia's papers over the table. 'I've been having an hour with her. Two
thousand more, she says. Better multiply