s more honourable likeness to their father, in the certainty of
his refusal to speak pardon's empty word or touch an offending hand,
without their father's warrant for the injury wiped out; and as she had
no wish for that to be done, she could anticipate his withholding of the
word.

For her brother at wrestle with his fallen fortunes was now the beating
heart of Carinthia's mind. Her husband was a shadow there. He did obscure
it, and he might annoy, he was unable to set it in motion. He sat there
somewhat like Youth's apprehension of Death:--the dark spot seen mistily
at times through people's tears, or visioned as in an ambush beyond the
hills; occasionally challenged to stimulate recklessness; oftener
overlooked, acknowledged for the undesired remote of life's conditions,
life's evil, fatal, ill-assorted yoke-fellow; and if it was in his power
to burst out of his corner and be terrible to her, she could bring up a
force unnamed and unmeasured, that being the blood of her father in her
veins. Having done her utmost to guard her babe, she said her prayers;
she stood for peace or the struggle.

'Does Lord Fleetwood speak of coming here?' she said.

'To-morrow.'

'I go to Croridge to-morrow.'

'Your ladyship returns?'

'Yes, I return Mr. Gower, you have fifty minutes before you dress for
dinner.'

He thought only of the exceeding charity of the intimation; and he may be
excused for his not seeing the feminine full answer it was, in an
implied, unmeditated contrast. He went gladly to find his new comrade,
his flower among grass-blades, the wonderful creature astonishing him and
surcharging his world by setting her face at him, opening her breast to
him, breathing a young man's word of words from a woman's mouth. His
flower among grass-blades for a head looking studiously down, she was his
fountain of wisdom as well, in the assurance she gave him of the wisdom
of his choice.

But Madge had put up the 'prize-fighter's lass,' by way of dolly defence,
to cover her amazed confusion when the proposal of this well-liked
gentleman to a girl such as she sounded churchy. He knocked it over
easily; it left, however, a bee at his ear and an itch to transfer the
buzzer's attentions and tease his darling; for she had betrayed herself
as right good game. Nor is there happier promise of life-long domestic
enlivenment for a prescient man of Letters than he has in the
contemplation of a pretty face showing the sensitiveness to th