, too, Carinthia, you could
aid by staying, by being with the boy and me. Carinthia!' he clasped her
name, the vapour left to him of her: 'I have learnt learnt what I am,
what you are; I have to climb a height to win back the wife I threw away.
She was unknown to me; I to myself nearly as much. I sent a warning of
the kind of husband for you--a poor kind; I just knew myself well enough
for that. You claimed my word--the blessing of my life, if I had known
it! We were married; I played--I see the beast I played. Money is power,
they say. I see the means it is to damn the soul, unless we--unless a man
does what I do now.'

Fleetwood stopped. He had never spoken such words--arterial words, as
they were, though the commonest, and with moist brows, dry lips, he could
have resumed, have said more, have taken this woman, this dream of the
former bride, the present stranger, into his chamber of the brave aims
and sentenced deeds. Her brother in the room was the barrier; and she sat
mute, large-eyed, expressionless. He had plunged low in the man's
hearing; the air of his lungs was thick, hard to breathe, for shame of a
degradation so extreme.

Chillon imagined him to be sighing. He had to listen further. 'Soul' had
been an uttered word. When the dishonouring and mishandling brute of a
young nobleman stuttered a compliment to Carinthia on her 'faith in God's
assistance and the efficacy of prayer,' he jumped to his legs, not to be
shouting 'Hound!' at him. He said, under control: 'God's name shall be
left to the Church. My sister need not be further troubled. She has shown
she is not persuaded by me. Matters arranged here quickly,--we start. If
I am asked whether I think she does wisely to run the risks in an
insurrectionary country rather than remain at home exposed to the honours
and amusements your lordship offers, I think so; she is acting in her
best interests. She has the choice of being abroad with me or staying
here unguarded by me. She has had her experience. She chooses rightly.
Paint the risks she runs, you lay the colours on those she escapes.' She
thanks the treatment she has undergone for her freedom to choose. I am
responsible for nothing but the not having stood against her most
wretched marriage. It might have been foreseen. Out there in the war she
is protected. Here she is with--I spare your lordship the name.'

Fleetwood would have heard harsher had he not been Carinthia's husband.
He withheld his reply. The