l present myself two
days after. I wish Lady Fleetwood to do the part of hostess at Calesford.
Tell her I depute you to kiss my son for me. Now I leave you. Good-night.
I shan't sleep. I remember your saying, "bad visions come under the
eyelids." I shall keep mine open and read--read her father's book of the
Maxims; I generally find two or three at a dip to stimulate. No wonder
she venerates him. That sort of progenitor is your "permanent
aristocracy." Hard enemy. She must have some of her mother in her, too.
Abuse me to her, admit the justice of reproaches, but say, reason, good
feeling--I needn't grind at it. Say I respect her. Advise her to swallow
the injury--not intended for insult. I don't believe anything higher than
respect can be offered to a woman. No defence of me to her, but I'll tell
you, that when I undertook to keep my word with her, I plainly
said--never mind; good-night. If we meet in the morning, let this
business rest until it 's done. I must drive to help poor Chums and see
about the Inquest.'

Fleetwood nodded from the doorway. Gower was left with humming ears.

CHAPTER XL

RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS

They went to their beds doomed to lie and roam as the solitaries of a
sleepless night. They met next day like a couple emerging from sirocco
deserts, indisposed for conversation or even short companionship, much of
the night's dry turmoil in their heads. Each would have preferred the
sight of an enemy; and it was hardly concealed by them, for they inclined
to regard one another as the author of their infernal passage through the
drear night's wilderness.

Fleetwood was the civiller; his immediate prospective duties being clear,
however abhorrent. But he had inflicted a monstrous disturbance on the
man he meant in his rash, decisive way to elevate, if not benefit.
Gower's imagination, foreign to his desires and his projects, was playing
juggler's tricks with him, dramatizing upon hypotheses, which mounted in
stages and could pretend to be soberly conceivable, assuming that the
earl's wild hints overnight were a credible basis. He transported himself
to his first view of the Countess Livia, the fountain of similes born of
his prostrate adoration, close upon the invasion and capture of him by
the combined liqueurs in the giddy Batlen lights; and joining the Arabian
magic in his breast at the time with the more magical reality now
proposed as a sequel to it, he entered the land where dreams confe