e sting,
which is not allowed to poison her temper, and is short of fetching
tears. The dear innocent girl gave this pleasing promise; moreover, she
could be twisted-to laugh at herself, just a little. Now, the young woman
who can do that has already jumped the hedge into the highroad of
philosophy, and may become a philosopher's mate in its by-ways, where the
minute discoveries are the notable treasures.

They had their ramble, agreeable to both, despite the admonitory dose
administered to one of them. They might have been espied at a point or
two from across the parkpalings; their laughter would have caught an
outside pedestrian's hearing. Whatever the case, Owain Wythan, riding
down off Croridge, big with news of her brother for the countess, dined
at her table, and walking up the lane to the Esslemont Arms on a moonless
night, to mount his horse, pitched against an active and, as it was
deemed by Gower's observation of his eyes, a scientific fist. The design
to black them finely was attributable to the dyeing accuracy of the
stroke. A single blow had done it. Mr. Wythan's watch and purse were
untouched; and a second look at the swollen blind peepers led Gower to
surmise that they were, in the calculation of the striker, his own.

He walked next day to the Royal Sovereign inn. There he came upon the
earl driving his phaeton. Fleetwood jumped down, and Gower told of the
mysterious incident, as the chief thing he had to tell, not rendering it
so mysterious in his narrative style. He had the art of indicating
darkly.

'Ines, you mean?' Fleetwood cried, and he appeared as nauseated and
perplexed as he felt. Why should Ines assault Mr. Wythan? It happened
that the pugilist's patron had, within the last fifteen minutes, driven
past a certain thirty-acre meadow, sight of which on his way to Carinthia
had stirred him. He had even then an idea of his old deeds dogging him to
bind him, every one of them, the smallest.

'But you've nothing to go by,' he said. 'Why guess at this rascal more
than another?'

Gower quoted Mrs. Rundles and the ostler for witnesses to Kit's visit
yesterday to the Royal Sovereign, though Kit shunned the bar of the
Esslemont Arms.

'I guess pretty clearly, because I suspect he was hanging about and saw
me and Madge together.'

'Consolations for failures in town?--by the way, you are complimented,
and I don't think you deserved it. However, there was just the chance to
stop a run to perdition.