ef manager's office, he passed through the heated
atmosphere of black-browed, wiry little rebels, who withheld the salute
as they lounged: a posture often preceding the spring in compulsorily
idle workers. He was aware of instinct abroad, an antagonism to the
proprietor's rights. They roused him to stand by them, and were his own
form of instinct, handsomely clothed. It behoved that he should examine
them and the claims against them, to be sure of his ground. He and Mr.
Howell Edwards debated the dispute for an hour; agreeing, partially
differing. There was a weakness on the principle in Edwards. These
fellows fixed to the spot are for compromise too much. An owner of mines
has no steady reckoning of income if the rate of wage is perpetually to
shift according to current, mostly ignorant, versions of the prosperity
of the times. Are we so prosperous? It is far from certain. And if the
rate ascends, the question of easing it down to suit the discontinuance
of prosperity agitating our exchequer--whose demand is for
fixity--perplexes us further.

However, that was preliminary. He and Howell Edwards would dine and
wrangle it out. The earl knew himself a hot disputant after dinner.
Incidentally he heard of Lady Fleetwood as a guest of Mrs. Wythan;
and the circumstance was injurious to him because he stood against Mr.
Wythan's pampering system with his men.

Ines up at the castle smelt of beer, and his eyelids were sottish.
Nothing to do tries the virtue of the best. He sought his excuse in a
heavy lamentation over my lady's unjust suspicion of him,--a known man
of honour, though he did serve his paytron.

The cause of Lady Fleetwood's absence was exposed to her outraged lord,
who had sent the man purely to protect her at this castle, where she
insisted on staying. The suspicion cast on the dreary lusher was the
wife's wild shot at her husband. One could understand a silly woman's
passing terror. Her acting under the dictate of it struck the husband's
ribbed breast as a positive clap of hostilities between them across a
chasm.

His previous placable mood was immediately conceived by him to have been
one of his fits of generosity; a step to a frightful dutiful embrace
of an almost repulsive object. He flung the thought of her back on her
Whitechapel. She returned from that place with smiles, dressed in a
laundry white with a sprinkle of smuts, appearing to him as an adversary
armed and able to strike. There was a blow, for