A cold wind for you.'

'We walked fast.'

She compelled him to take her in the plural, though he addressed her
separately, but her tones had their music.

'Your brother, Captain Kirby-Levellier, I believe?'

'My brother is not of the army now, my lord.'

She waved her hand for Madge to conduct donkey and baby to the house. He
noticed. He was unruffled.

The form of amenity expected from her, in relation to her brother, was
not exhibited. She might perhaps be feeling herself awkward at
introductions, and had to be excused.

'I beg,' he said, and motioned to Chillon the way of welcome into the
park, saw the fixed figure, and passed over the unspoken refusal, with a
remark to Mr. Wythan: 'At Barlings, I presume?'

'My tent is pitched there,' was the answer.

'Good-bye, my brother,' said Carinthia.

Chillon folded his arms round her. 'God bless you, dear love. Let me see
you soon.' He murmured:

'You can protect yourself.'

'Fear nothing for me, dearest.'

She kissed her brother's cheek. The strain of her spread fingers on his
shoulder signified no dread at her being left behind.

Strangers observing their embrace would have vowed that the pair were
brother and sister, and of a notable stock.

'I will walk with you to Croridge again when you send word you are
willing to go; and so, good-bye, Owain,' she said.

She gave her hand; frankly she pressed the Welshman's, he not a whit
behind her in frankness.

Fleetwood had a skimming sense of a drop upon a funny, whirly world. He
kept from giddiness, though the whirl had lasted since he beheld the form
of a wild forest girl, dancing, as it struck him now, over an abyss, on
the plumed shoot of a stumpy tree.

Ay, and she danced at the ducal schloss;--she mounted his coach like a
witch of the Alps up crags;--she was beside him pelting to the vale under
a leaden Southwester;--she sat solitary by the fireside in the room of
the inn.

Veil it. He consented to the veil he could not lift. He had not even
power to try, and his heart thumped.

London's Whitechapel Countess glided before him like a candle in the fog.

He had accused her as the creature destroying Romance. Was it gold in
place of gilding, absolute upper human life that the ridiculous object at
his heels over London proposed instead of delirious brilliancies, drunken
gallops, poison-syrups,--puffs of a young man's vapours?

There was Madge and the donkey basket-trap ahead on the road to the
house