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 suppliant man, however little for the man himself, when she who has much to pardon can depict him in a manner that almost smiles, not unlike a dandling nurse the miniature man-child sobbing off to sleep after a frenzy; an example of a genus framed for excuses, and he more than others.  Chillon was amused up to inquisitive surprise by Carinthia’s novel idea of her formerly dreaded riddle of a husband.  As she sketched the very rational alliance proposed to her, and his kick at the fetters of Calesford, a shadowy dash for an image of the solicitous tyrant was added perforce to complete the scene; following which, her head moved sharply, the subject was flung over her shoulder.