or 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 world sat on him heavily.

He recurred to Gower Woodseer's letter.

The pictures and images in it were not the principal matter,--the
impression had been deep. A plain transcription of the young mother's
acts and words did more to portray her: the reader could supply
reflections.

Would her boy's father be very pleased to see him? she had asked.

And she spoke of a fear that the father would try to take her boy from
her.

'Never that--you have my word!' Fleetwood said; and he nodded
consentingly over her next remark--

'Not while I live, till he must go to school!'

The stubborn wife would be the last of women to sit and weep as a rifled
mother.

A child of the Countess Carinthia (he phrased it) would not be deficient
in will, nor would the youngster lack bravery.

For his part, comparison rushing at him and searching him, he owned that
he leaned on pride. To think that he did, became a theme for pride. The
mother had the primitive virtues, the father the developed: he was the
richer mine. And besides, he was he, the unriddled, complex, individual
he; she was the plain barbarian survival, good for giving her offspring
bone, muscle, stout heart.

Shape the hypothesis of a fairer woman the mother of the heir to the
earldom.

Henrietta was analyzed in a glimpse. Courage, animal healthfulness, she,
too, might--her husband not obstructing--transmit; and good looks, eyes
of the sapphire AEgean. And therewith such pliability as the Mother of
Love requires of her servants.

Could that woman resist seductions?

Fleetwood's wrath with her for refusing him and inducing him in spite to
pledge his word elsewhere, haphazard, pricked a curiosity to know whether
the woman could be--and easily! easily! he wagered--led to make her
conduct warrant for his contempt of her. Led,--that is, misled, you might
say, if you were pleading for a doll. But it was necessary to bait the
pleasures for the woman, in order to have full view of the precious fine
fate one has escaped. Also to get well rid of a sort of hectic in the
blood, which the woman's beauty has cast on that reflecting tide: a
fever-sign, where the fever has become quite emotionless and is merely
desirous for the stain of it to be washed out. As this is not the desire