Carinthia and her babe reached Esslemont, no matter what impediments.  There, like a stopped runner whose pantings lengthen to the longer breath, her alarms over the infant subsided, ceasing for as long as she clasped it or was in the room with it.  Walking behind the precious donkey-basket round the park, she went armed, and she soon won a fearful name at Kentish cottage-hearths, though she ’was not black to see, nor old.  No, she was very young.  But she did all the things that soldiers do,—­was a bit of a foreigner;—­she brought a reputation up from the Welsh land, and it had a raven’s croak and a glow-worm’s drapery and a goblin’s origin.

Something was hinted of her having agitated London once.  Somebody dropped word of her and that old Lord Levellier up at Croridge.  She stalked park and country at night.  Stories, one or two near the truth, were told of a restless and a very decided lady down these parts as well; and the earl her husband daren’t come nigh in his dread of her, so that he runs as if to save his life out of every place she enters.  And he’s not one to run for a trifle.  His pride is pretty well a match for princes and princesses.

All the same, he shakes in his shoes before her, durst hardly spy at Esslemont again while she’s in occupation.  His managing gentleman comes down from him, and goes up from her; that’s how they communicate.  One week she’s quite solitary; another week the house is brimful as can be.  She ’s the great lady entertaining then.  Yet they say it ’s a fact, she has not a shilling of her own to fling at a beggar.  She ’ll stock a cottage wanting it with provision for a fortnight or more, and she’ll order the doctor in, and she’ll call and see the right things done for illness.  ’But no money; no one’s to expect money of her.  The shots you hear in Esslemont grounds out of season are she and her maid, always alongside her, at it before a target on a bank, trying that old Lord Levellier’s gunpowder out of his mill; and he’s got no money either; not for his workmen, they say, until they congregate, and a threatening to blow him up brings forth half their pay, on account.  But he ’s a known miser.  She’s not that.  She’s a pleasant-faced lady for the poor.  She has the voice poor people like.  It’s only her enemy, maybe her husband, she can be terrible to.  She’d drive a hole through a robber stopping her on the road, as soon as look at him.

This was Esslemont’s atmosphere working its way to the earl, not so very long after the establishment of his countess there.  She could lay hold of the English, too, it seemed.  Did she call any gentleman of the district by his Christian name?  Lord Simon Pitscrew reported her doing so in the case of one of the Welshmen.  Those Welshmen!  Apparently they are making a push for importance in the kingdom!

CHAPTER XXXV

IN WHICH CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED