ood to a memory,
seeming impossible, some other world's attested reality,--she the angel,
he the demon of it,--unimaginable, yet present, palpable, a fact beyond
his mind, he let her hand fall scarce pressed. Did she expect more than
the common sense of it to be said? The 'more' was due to her, and should
partly be said at their next meeting for the no further separating; or
else he would vow in his heart to spread it out over a whole life's
course of wakeful devotion, with here and there a hint of his younger
black nature. Better that except for a desire seizing him to make
sacrifice of the demon he had been, offer him up hideously naked to her
mercy. But it was a thing to be done by hints, by fits, by small doses.
She could only gradually be brought to the comprehension of how the man
or demon found indemnification under his yoke of marriage in snatching
her, to torment, perhaps betray; and solace for the hurt to his pride in
spreading a snare for the beautiful Henrietta. A confession! It could be
to none but the priest.

Knowledge of Carinthia would have urged him to the confession
straightway. In spite of horror, the task of helping to wash a black soul
white would have been her compensation for loss of companionship with her
soldier brother. She would have held hot iron to the rabid wound and come
to a love of the rescued sufferer.

It seemed to please her when he spoke of Mr. Rose Mackrell's applications
to get back his volume of her father's Book of Maxims.

'There is mine,' she said.

For the sake of winning her quick gleam at any word of the bridal couple,
he conjured a picture of her Madge and his Gower, saying: 'That
marriage--as you will learn--proves him honest from head to foot; as she
is in her way, too.'

'Oh, she is,' was the answer.

'We shall be driving down to them very soon, Carinthia.'

'It will delight them to see either of us, my lord.'

'My lady, adieu until I am over with this Calesford,' he gestured, as in
fetters.

She spared him the my lording as she said adieu, sensitive as she was,
and to his perception now.

Lady Arpington had a satisfactory two minutes with him before he left the
house. London town, on the great day at Calesford, interchanged
communications, to the comforting effect, that the Countess of Fleetwood
would reign over the next entertainment.

CHAPTER XLVII

THE LAST: WITH A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME

It is of seemingly good augury for the cause of a