state, as she insists--if the man
wishes it. Depend upon it he is the key of the mystery.

Totally the contrary, Lady Arpington declares! the man is a learned man,
formerly a Professor of English Literature in a German University,
and no connection of the Whitechapel Countess whatever, a chance
acquaintance at the most. He operates on Lord Fleetwood with doses of
German philosophy; otherwise, a harmless creature; and has consented to
wash and dress. It is my lord who has had the chief influence. And the
Countess Livia now backs him in maintaining that there is nowhere a more
honest young man to be found. She may have her reasons.

As for the Whitechapel Countess... the whole story of the Old Buccaneer
and Countess Fanny was retold, and it formed a terrific halo, presage
of rains and hurricane tempest, over the girl the young earl had
incomprehensibly espoused to discard. Those two had a son and a daughter
born aboard:--in wedlock, we trust. The girl may be as wild a one as the
mother. She has a will as determined as her husband's. She is offered
Esslemont, the earl's Kentish mansion, for a residence, and she will
none of it until she has him down in the east of London on his knees
to entreat her. The injury was deep on one side or the other. It may
be almost surely prophesied that the two will never come together. Will
either of them deal the stroke for freedom? And which is the likelier?

Meanwhile Lord Fleetwood and his Whitechapel Countess composed the laugh
of London. Straightway Invention, the violent propagator, sprang from
his shades at a call of the great world's appetite for more, and,
rushing upon stationary Fact, supplied the required. Marvel upon marvel
was recounted. The mixed origin of the singular issue could not be
examined, where all was increasingly funny.

Always the shout for more produced it. She and her band of Whitechapel
boys were about in ambush to waylay the earl wherever he went. She stood
knocking at his door through a whole night. He dared not lug her before
a magistrate for fear of exposure. Once, riding in the park with a troop
of friends he had a young woman pointed out to him, and her finger was
levelled, and she cried: 'There is the English nobleman who marries a
girl and leaves her to go selling cabbages!'

He left town for the Island, and beheld his yacht sailing the
Solent:--my lady the countess was on board! A pair of Tyrolese minstrels
in the square kindled his enthusiasm at o