him, now immoveable for obstinacy; malignant to
stay down in those vile slums and direct tons of sooty waters on his
head from its mains in the sight of London, causing the least histrionic
of men to behave as an actor. He beheld her a skull with a lamp behind
the eyeholes.

But this woman was the woman who made him a father; she was the mother
of the heir of the House; and the boy she clasped and suckled as her boy
was his boy. They met inseparably in that new life.

Truly, there could not be a woman of flesh so near to a likeness with
the beatific image of Feltre's worshipped Madonna!

The thought sparkled and darkened in Fleetwood's mind, as a star passing
into cloud. For an uproarious world claimed the woman, jeered at all
allied with her; at her husband most, of course:--the punctilious
noodle! the golden jackass, tethered and goaded! He had choice among the
pick of women: the daughter of the Old Buccaneer was preferred by the
wiseacre Coelebs. She tricked him cunningly and struck a tremendous
return blow in producing her male infant.

By the way, was she actually born in wedlock? Lord Levellier's
assurances regarding her origin were, by the calculation, a miser's
shuffles to clinch his bargain. Assuming the representative of holy
motherhood to be a woman of illegitimate birth, the history of the
House to which the spotted woman gave an heir would suffer a jolt when
touching on her. And altogether the history fumed rank vapours. Imagine
her boy in his father's name a young collegian! No commonly sensitive
lad could bear the gibes of the fellows raking at antecedents: Fleetwood
would be the name to start roars. Smarting for his name, the earl chafed
at the boy's mother. Her production of a man-child was the further and
grosser offence.

The world sat on him. His confession to some degree of weakness, even
to folly, stung his pride of individuality so that he had to soothe the
pain by tearing himself from a thought of his folly's partner, shutting
himself up and away from her. Then there was a cessation of annoyance,
flatteringly agreeable: which can come to us only of our having done
the right thing, young men will think. He felt at once warmly with the
world, enjoyed the world's kind shelter, and in return for its eulogy
of his unprecedented attachment to the pledge of his word, admitted an
understanding of its laughter at the burlesque edition of a noble lady
in the person of the Whitechapel Countess. The wo