o you're off. What am I to tell my lord when he comes?' Kit growled.
'His yacht's fetching for a Welsh seaport.'

She counted it a piece of information gained, and jumped to her seat,
bidding the driver start. To have pretty well lost her character for a
hero changed into a patron's dog, was a thought that outweighed the show
of incivility. Some little distance away, she reproached herself for not
having been so civil as to inquire what day my lord was expected, by
his appointment. The girl reflected on the strangeness of a body of
discontented miners bringing my lord and my lady close, perhaps to meet.

CHAPTER XXX. REBECCA WYTHAN

The earl was looked for at the, chief office of the mines, and each
day an expectation of him closed in disappointment, leaving it to be
surmised that there were more serious reasons for his continued absence
during a crisis than any discussed; whether indeed, as when a timepiece
neglects to strike the hour which is, by the reckoning of natural
impatience, past, the capital charge of 'crazy works' must not be
brought against a nobleman hitherto precise upon business, of a just
disposition, fairly humane. For though he was an absentee sucking the
earth through a tube, in Ottoman ease, he had never omitted the duty of
personally attending on the spot to grave cases under dispute. The son
of the hardheaded father came out at a crisis; and not too highhandedly:
he could hear an opposite argument to the end. Therefore, since
he refused to comply without hearing, he was wanted on the spot
imperatively, now.

Irony perusing History offers the beaten and indolent a sugary acid in
the indication of the spites and the pranks, the whims and the tastes,
at the springs of main events. It is, taken by itself, destructive
nourishment. But those who labour in the field to shovel the clods of
earth to History, would be wiser of their fellows for a minor dose
of it. Mr. Howell Edwards consulting with Mr. Owain Wythan on the
necessity, that the earl should instantly keep his promise to appear
among the men and stop the fermentation, as in our younger days a
lordly owner still might do by small concessions and the physical
influence--the nerve-charm--could suppose him to be holding aloof for
his pleasure or his pride; perhaps because of illness or inability to
conceive the actual situation at a distance. He mentioned the presence
of the countess, and Mr. Wythan mentioned it, neither of them thinking
a