ss they
are outstripped by revelations.

Yet it startled him to hear the earl say: 'You'll get audience at ten;
I've arranged; make the most of the situation to her. I refuse to help. I
foresee it 's the only way of solving this precious puzzle. You do me and
every one of us a service past paying. Not a man of her set worth. . . .
She--but you'll stop it; no one else can. Of course, you've had your
breakfast. Off, and walk yourself into a talkative mood, as you tell me
you do.'

'One of the things I do when I've nobody to hear,' said Gower,
speculating whether the black sprite in this young nobleman was for
sending him as a rod to scourge the lady: an ingenious device, that smelt
of mediaeval Courts and tickled his humour.

'Will she listen?' he said gravely.

'She will listen; she has not to learn you admire. You admit she has
helped to trim and polish, and the rest. She declares you're
incorruptible. There's the ground open. I fling no single sovereign more
into that quicksand, and I want not one word further on the subject. I
follow you to Esslemont. Pray, go.'

Fleetwood pushed into the hall. A footman was ordered to pack and deposit
Mr. Woodseer's portmanteau at the coach-office.

'The principal point is to make sure we have all the obligations,' Gower
said.

'You know the principal point,' said the earl. 'Relieve me.'

He faced to the opening street door. Lord Feltre stood in the framing of
it--a welcome sight. The 'monastic man of fashion,' of Gower's phrase for
him, entered, crooning condolences, with a stretched waxen hand for his
friend, a partial nod for Nature's worshipper--inefficient at any serious
issue of our human affairs, as the earl would now discover.

Gower left the two young noblemen to their greetings. Happily for him,
philosophy, in the present instance, after a round of profundities,
turned her lantern upon the comic aspect of his errand. Considering the
Countess Livia, and himself, and the tyrant, who benevolently and
providentially, or sardonically, hurled them to their interview, the
situation was comic, certainly, in the sense of its being an illumination
of this life's odd developments. For thus had things come about, that if
it were possible even to think of the lady's condescending, he, thanks to
the fair one he would see before evening, was armed and proof against his
old infatuation or any renewal of it. And he had been taught to read
through the beautiful twilighted woman, a