the feebleness of a man vainly courting
sleep, the disarmed philosopher tossed from one side to the other through
the remaining hours of darkness, polishing sentences that were natural
spouts of choicest diction; and still the earl's virulent small sneer
rankled. He understood why, after a time. The fervour of advocacy, which
inspires high diction, had been wanting. He had sought more to lash the
earl with his personal disgust and partly to parade his contempt of a
lucrative dependency--than he had felt for the countess. No wonder his
diction was poor. It was a sample of limp thinness; a sort of tongue of a
Master Slender:--flavourless, unsatisfactory, considering its object:
measured to be condemned by its poor achievement. He had nevertheless a
heart to feel for the dear lady, and heat the pleading for her,
especially when it ran to its object, as along a shaft of the sun-rays,
from the passionate devotedness of that girl Madge.

He brooded over it till it was like a fire beneath him to drive him from
his bed and across the turfy roller of the hill to the Wythans', in the
front of an autumnal sunrise--grand where the country is shorn of surface
decoration, as here and there we find some unadorned human creature,
whose bosom bears the ball of warmth.

CHAPTER XXXII

IN WHICH WE SEE CARINTHIA PUT IN PRACTICE ONE OF HER OLD FATHER'S LESSONS

Seated at his breakfast-table, the earl saw Gower stride in, and could
have wagered he knew the destination of the fellow's morning walk. It
concerned him little; he would be leaving the castle in less than an
hour. She might choose to come or choose to keep away. The whims of
animals do not affect men unless they are professionally tamers. Petty
domestic dissensions are besides poor webs to the man pulling
singlehanded at ropes with his revolted miners. On the topic of wages,
too, he was Gower's master, and could hold forth: by which he taught
himself to feel that practical affairs are the proper business of men,
women and infants being remotely secondary; the picturesque and poetry,
consequently, sheer nonsense.

'I suppose your waiting here is useless, to quote you,' he said. 'The
countess can decide now to remain, if she pleases. Drive with me to
Cardiff--I miss you if you 're absent a week. Or is it legs? Drop me a
line of your stages on the road, and don't loiter much.'

Gower spoke of starting his legs next day, if he had to do the journey
alone: and he clouded th