information.

At the second of the aristocratic Clubs of London's West, into which
he stepped like an easy member, the hall-porter did not examine his
clothing from German hat to boots, and gave him Lord Fleetwood's town
address. He could tell Madge at night by the door of the shuttered shop,
that Lord Fleetwood had gone down to Wales.

'It means her having to wait,' she said. 'The minister has been to the
coach-office, to order up her box from that inn. He did it in his name;
they can't refuse; no money's owing. She must have a change. Sally has
fifteen pounds locked up in case of need.'

Sally's capacity and economy fetched the penniless philosopher a slap.

'You've taken to this lady,' he said.

'She held my hand, while Kit Ines was at his work; and I was new to
her, and a prize-fighter's lass, they call me:--upon the top of that
nobleman's coach, where he made me sit, behind her, to see the fight;
and she his wedded lady that morning. A queer groom. He may keep Kit
Ines from drink, he's one of you men, and rides over anything in his
way. I can't speak about it; I could swear it before a judge, from what
I know. Those Rundles at that inn don't hear anything it suits him to
do. All the people down in those parts are slaves to him. And I thought
he was a real St. George before,--yes, ready I was to kiss the ground
his feet crossed. If you could, it's Chinningfold near where Admiral
Fakenham lives, down Hampshire way. Her friends ought to hear what's
happened to her. They'll find her in a queer place. She might go to the
minister's. I believe she's happier with us girls.'

Gower pledged his word to start for Chinningfold early as the light next
day. He liked the girl the better, in an amicable fashion, now that
his nerves had got free of the transient spell of her kettle tone--the
hardly varied one note of a heart boiling with sisterly devotion to
a misused stranger of her sex;--and, after the way of his race,
imagination sprang up in him, at the heels of the quieted senses,
releasing him from the personal and physical to grasp the general
situation and place the protagonist foremost.

He thought of Carinthia, with full vision of her. Some wrong had been
done, or some violation of the right, to guess from the girl Madge's
molten words in avoidance of the very words. It implied--though it
might be but one of Love's shrewder discords--such suspected traitorous
dealing of a man with their sister woman as makes the w