piness.' Gower had gone headlong into happiness, where philosophers
are smirkers and mouthers of ordinary stuff. His brightest remark was to
put the question to his father: 'The three good things of the Isle of
Britain?' and treble the name of Madge Woodseer for a richer triad than
the Glamorgan man could summon. Pardonably foolish; but mindful of a past
condition of indiscipline, Nature's philosopher said to the old minister:
'Your example saved me for this day at a turn of my road, sir.' Nature's
poor wild scholar paid that tribute to the regimental sectarian. Enough
for proud philosophy to have done the thing demonstrably right, Gower's
look at his Madge and the world said. That 'European rose of the
coal-black order,' as one of his numerous pictures of her painted the
girl, was a torch in a cavern for dusky redness at her cheeks. Her
responses beneath the book Mr. Woodseer held open had flashed a distant
scene through Lord Fleetwood. Quaint to notice was her reverence for the
husband she set on a towering monument, and her friendly, wifely;
whispered jogs at the unpractical creature's forgetfulness of his wraps,
his books; his writing-desk--on this tremendous occasion, his pipe. Again
the earl could have sworn, that despite her antecedents, she brought her
husband honest dower, as surely as she gave the lucky Pagan a whole
heart; and had a remarkably fine bust to house the organ, too; and a
clarionet of a voice, curiously like her, mistress's. And not a bad
fellow, but a heathen dog, a worshipper of Nature, walked off with the
girl, whose voice had the ring of Carinthia's. The Powers do not explain
their dispensations.

These two now one by united good-will for the junction Lord Fleetwood
himself drove through Loudon to the hills, where another carriage awaited
them by his orders, in the town of London's race-course. As soon as they
were seated he nodded to them curtly from his box, and drove back,
leaving them puzzled. But his countess had not so very coldly seen him
start his horses to convey the modest bridal pair. His impulses to
kindness could be politic. Before quitting Whitechapel, she went with
Sarah to look at the old shop of the fruits and vegetables. They found it
shut, untenanted; Mr. Woodseer told them that the earl was owner of it by
recent purchase, and would not lease it. He had to say why; for the
countess was dull to the notion of a sentimental desecration in the
occupying of her bedchamber by poor