alteration of
English taste likely of occurrence in the remote posterity she vows she
is for addressing after she has exhausted our present hungry generation.
The posterity signified will, it is calculable, it is next to certain,
have studied a developed human nature so far as to know the composition
of it a not unequal mixture of the philosophic and the romantic, and
that credible realism is to be produced solely by an involvement of
those two elements. Or else, she may be sure, her story once out of the
mouth, goes off dead as the spirits of a vapour that has performed the
stroke of energy. She holds a surprising event in the history of 'the
wealthiest nobleman of his time,' and she would launch it upon readers
unprepared, with the reference to our mysterious and unfathomable nature
for an explanation of the stunning crack on the skull.

This may do now. It will not do ten centuries hence. For the English,
too, are a changeable people in the sight of ulterior Time.

One of the good pieces of work Lord Fleetwood could suppose he had
performed was recalled to him near the turning to his mews by the
handsome Piccadilly fruit-shop. He jumped to the pavement, merely to
gratify. Sarah Winch with a word of Madge; and being emotional just
then, he spoke of Lady Fleetwood's attachment to Madge; and he looked at
Sarah straight, he dropped his voice: 'She said, you remember, you were
sisters to her.'

Sarah remembered that he had spoken of it before. Two brilliant drops
from the deepest of woman's ready well stood in her eyes.

He carried the light of them away. They were such pure jewels of tribute
to the Carinthia now seen by him as worshipping souls of devotees offer
to their Madonna for her most glorious adornment.

CHAPTER XXXIX. THE RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR

Desiring loneliness or else Lord Feltre's company, Fleetwood had to
grant a deferred audience at home to various tradesmen, absurdly fussy
about having the house of his leased estate of Calesford furnished
complete and habitable on the very day stipulated by his peremptory
orders that the place should be both habitable and hospitable. They
were right, they were excused; grand entertainments of London had been
projected, and he fell into the weariful business with them, thinking
of Henrietta's insatiable appetite for the pleasures. He had taken the
lease of this burdensome Calesford, at an eight-miles' drive from the
Northwest of town, to gratify the