saying: 'It is a dark land.' For the heart
is truly declared to be our colourist. A day having the gale in its
breast, sweeping the whole country and bending the trees for the twigs
to hiss like spray of the billows around our island, was a day of
golden splendour to the young bride of the Earl of Fleetwood, though he
scarcely addressed one syllable to her, and they sat side by side all
but dumb, he like a coachman driving an unknown lady fare, on a morning
after a night when his wife's tongue may have soured him for the sex.

CHAPTER XIV. A PENDANT OF THE FOREGOING

Mention has been omitted or forgotten by the worthy Dame, in her vagrant
fowl's treatment of a story she cannot incubate, will not relinquish,
and may ultimately addle, that the bridegroom, after walking with a
disengaged arm from the little village church at Croridge to his
coach and four at the cross of the roads to Lekkatts and the lowland,
abruptly, and as one pursuing a deferential line of conduct he had
prescribed to himself, asked his bride, what seat she would prefer.

He shouted: 'Ives!'

A person inside the coach appeared to be effectually roused.

The glass of the window dropped. The head of a man emerged. It was
the head of one of the bargefaced men of the British Isles, broad, and
battered flattish, with sentinel eyes.

In an instant the heavy-headed but not ill-looking fellow was nimble and
jumped from the coach.

'Napping, my lord,' he said.

Heavy though the look of him might be, his feet were light; they flipped
a bar of a hornpipe at a touch of the ground. Perhaps they were allowed
to go with their instinct for the dance, that his master should have a
sample of his wakefulness. He quenched a smirk and stood to take orders;
clad in a flat blue cap, a brown overcoat, and knee-breeches, as the
temporary bustle of his legs had revealed.

Fleet-wood heard the young lady say: 'I would choose, if you please, to
sit beside you.'

He gave a nod of enforced assent, glancing at the vacated box.

The man inquired: 'A knee and a back for the lady to mount up, my lord?'

'In!' was the smart command to him; and he popped in with the agility of
his popping out.

Then Carinthia made reverence to the grey lean figure of her uncle and
kissed Mrs. Carthew. She needed no help to mount the coach. Fleetwood's
arm was rigidly extended, and he did not visibly wince when this foreign
girl sprang to the first hand-grip on the coach and said: 'N