he day in the evening; Madge to
praise him, Madge to correct his vanity.

Love was out of the count, but Carinthia's leaping sympathy decorated the
baldness of the sketch and spied his features through the daubed mask he
chose to wear as a member of the order of husbands, without taking it for
his fun. Dry material statements presented the reality she doated to
think of. Moreover, the marriage of these two renewed her belief in true
marriages, and their intention to unite was evidence of love.

'My journey to England was worth all troubles for the meeting Madge,' she
said. 'I can look with pleasure to that day of my meeting her first--the
day, it was then!'

She stopped. Madge felt the quivering upward of a whimper to a sob in her
breast. She slipped away.

'It's a day that has come round to be repaired, Lady Fleetwood,' said
Gower. 'If you will. Will you not? He has had a blow--the death of a
friend, violent death. It has broken him. He wants a month or so in your
mountains. I have thought him hard to deal with; he is humane. His
enormous wealth has been his tempter. Madge and I will owe him our means
of livelihood, enough for cottagers, until I carve my way. His feelings
are much more independent of his rank than those of most noblemen. He
will repeat your kind words to Madge and me; I am sure of it. He has had
heavy burdens; he is young, hardly formed yet. He needs a helper; I mean,
one allied to him. You forgive me? I left him with a Catholic lord for
comforter, who regards my prescript of the study of Nature, when we're in
grief, as about the same as an offer of a dish of cold boiled greens.
Silver and ivory images are more consoling. Neither he nor I can offer
the right thing for Lord Fleetwood. It will be found here. And then your
mountains. More than I, nearly as much as you, he has a poet's ardour for
mountain land. He and Mr. Wythan would soon learn to understand one
another on that head, if not as to management of mines.'

The pleading was crafty, and it was penetrative in the avoidance of
stress. Carinthia shook herself to feel moved. The endeavour chilled her
to a notion that she was but half alive. She let the question approach
her, whether Chillon could pardon Lord Fleetwood. She, with no idea of
benignness, might speak pardon's word to him, on a late autumn evening
years hence, perhaps, or to his friends to-morrow, if he would
considerately keep distant. She was upheld by the thought of her
brother'