Lord Fleetwood, chatted; Madge had him wincing.  He might pull the cover off the child’s face carelessly—­he looked at the child.  His look at the child was a thought of the mother.  If he thought of the mother, he would be wanting to see her.  If he heard her call a gentleman by his Christian name, and heard the gentleman say ‘Carinthia’ my lord would begin to shiver at changes.  Women have to do unusual things when they would bring that outer set to human behaviour.  Perhaps my lord would mount the coach-box and whip his horses away, adieu forever.  His lady would not weep.  He might, perhaps, command her to keep her mouth shut from gentlemen’s Christian names, all except his own.  His lady would not obey.  He had to learn something of changes that had come to others as well as to himself.  Ah, and then would he dare hint, as base men will?  He may blow foul smoke on her, she will shine out of it.  He has to learn what she is, that is his lesson; and let him pray all night and work hard all day for it not to be too late.  Let him try to be a little like Mr. Woodseer, who worships the countess, and is hearty with the gentleman she treats as her best of friends.  There is the real nobleman.

Fleetwood chatted on airily.  His instincts were duller than those of the black-browed girl, at whom he gazed for idle satisfaction of eye from time to time while she replied demurely and maintained her drama of, the featureless but well-distinguished actors within her bosom,—­a round, plump bust, good wharfage and harbourage, he was thinking.  Excellent harbourage, supposing the arms out in pure good-will.  A girl to hold her voyager fast and safe!  Men of her class had really a capital choice in a girl like this.  Men of another class as well, possibly, for temporary anchorage out midchannel.  No?—­possibly not.  Here and there a girl is a Tartar.  Ines talked of her as if she were a kind of religious edifice and a doubt were sacrilege.  She could impress the rascal:  girls have their arts for reaching the holy end, and still they may have a welcome for a foreign ship.

The earl said humorously:  ’You will grant me permission to lunch at your mistress’s table in her absence?’ And she said:  ‘My lord!’ And he resumed, to waken her interest with a personal question:  ’You like our quiet country round Esslemont?’ She said:  ‘I do,’ and gave him plain look for look.  Her eye was undefended:  he went into it, finding neither shallow nor depth, simply the look, always the look; whereby he knew that no story of man was there, and not the shyest of remote responsive invitations from Nature’s wakened and detected rogue.  The bed of an unmarried young woman’s eye yields her secret of past and present to the intrepid diver, if he can get his plunge; he holds her for the tenth of a minute, that is the revealment.  Jewel or oyster-shell, it is ours.  She cannot withhold it, he knew right well.  This girl, then, was, he could believe, one of the rarely exampled innocent in knowledge.  He was practised to judge.