‘Oh, dear souls!’ Carinthia said.

Her breath drew in.

The three were dumb.  They saw Lord Fleetwood standing in the park gateway.

CHAPTER XXXVII

BETWEEN CARINTHIA AND HER LORD

The earl’s easy grace of manner was a ceremonial mantle on him as he grasped the situation in a look.  He bent with deferential familiarity to his countess, exactly toning the degree of difference which befitted a salute to the two gentlemen, amiable or hostile.

‘There and back?’ he said, and conveyed a compliment to Carinthia’s pedestrian vigour in the wary smile which can be recalled for a snub.

She replied:  ‘We have walked the distance, my lord.’

Her smile was the braced one of an untired stepper.

‘A cold wind for you.’

‘We walked fast.’

She compelled him to take her in the plural, though he addressed her separately, but her tones had their music.

‘Your brother, Captain Kirby-Levellier, I believe?’

‘My brother is not of the army now, my lord.’

She waved her hand for Madge to conduct donkey and baby to the house.  He noticed.  He was unruffled.

The form of amenity expected from her, in relation to her brother, was not exhibited.  She might perhaps be feeling herself awkward at introductions, and had to be excused.

‘I beg,’ he said, and motioned to Chillon the way of welcome into the park, saw the fixed figure, and passed over the unspoken refusal, with a remark to Mr. Wythan:  ‘At Barlings, I presume?’

‘My tent is pitched there,’ was the answer.

‘Good-bye, my brother,’ said Carinthia.

Chillon folded his arms round her.  ’God bless you, dear love.  Let me see you soon.’  He murmured: 

‘You can protect yourself.’

‘Fear nothing for me, dearest.’

She kissed her brother’s cheek.  The strain of her spread fingers on his shoulder signified no dread at her being left behind.

Strangers observing their embrace would have vowed that the pair were brother and sister, and of a notable stock.

’I will walk with you to Croridge again when you send word you are willing to go; and so, good-bye, Owain,’ she said.

She gave her hand; frankly she pressed the Welshman’s, he not a whit behind her in frankness.

Fleetwood had a skimming sense of a drop upon a funny, whirly world.  He kept from giddiness, though the whirl had lasted since he beheld the form of a wild forest girl, dancing, as it struck him now, over an abyss, on the plumed shoot of a stumpy tree.

Ay, and she danced at the ducal schloss;—­she mounted his coach like a witch of the Alps up crags;—­she was beside him pelting to the vale under a leaden Southwester;—­she sat solitary by the fireside in the room of the inn.

Veil it.  He consented to the veil he could not lift.  He had not even power to try, and his heart thumped.