He left the bed and strode round it, going in the guise of an urgent
somnambulist, or ghost bearing burden of an imperfectly remembered
mission. This was the room.

Reason and cold together overcame his illogical scruples to lie down on
that bed soliciting the sleep desired. He lay and groaned, lay and
rolled. All night the Naval Monarch with the loose cheeks and jelly
smile of the swinging sign-board creaked. Flaws of the North-easter
swung and banged him. He creaked high, in complaint,--low, in some
partial contentment. There was piping of his boatswain, shrill piping
--shrieks of the whistle. How many nights had that most ill-fated of
brides lain listening to the idiotic uproar! It excused a touch of
craziness. But how many? Not one, not two, ten, twenty:--count, count
to the exact number of nights the unhappy girl must have heard those mad
colloquies of the hurricane boatswain and the chirpy king. By heaven!
Whitechapel, after one night of it, beckons as a haven of grace.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

A DIP INTO THE SPRING'S WATERS

The night Lord Fleetwood had passed cured him of the wound Carinthia
dealt, with her blunt, defensive phrase and her Welshman. Seated on his
coach-box, he turned for a look the back way leading to Esslemont, and
saw rosed crag and mountain forest rather than the soft undulations of
parkland pushing green meadows or brown copse up the slopes under his
eye. She had never been courted: she deserved a siege. She was a