That was what he said.  Having said it, his escape from high tragics in the comfortable worldly tone rejoiced him; to some extent also the courteous audience she gave him.  And her hand was not refused.  Judging by her aspect, the plain common-sense ground of their situation was accepted for the best opening step to their union; though she must have had her feelings beneath it, and God knew that he had!  Her hand was friendly.  He could have thanked her for yielding her hand without a stage scene; she had fine breeding by nature.  The gracefullest of trained ladies could not have passed through such an interview so perfectly in the right key; and this was the woman he had seen at the wrestle with hideous death to save a muddy street-child!  She touched the gentleman in him.  Hard as it was while he held the hand of the wife, his little son’s mother, who might be called his bride, and drew him by the contact of their blood 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.