wholesome retreat of a public-house. A spell of his larkish hilarity was
for the punishment of the girl devoted to his heroical performances,
as he still considered her to be, though women are notoriously volatile,
and her language was mounting a stage above the kitchen.

Madge had little sorrow for him. She was the girl of the fiery heart,
not the large heart; she could never be devoted to more than one at a
time, and her mistress had all her heart. In relation to Kit, the
thought of her having sacrificed her good name to him, flung her on her
pride of chastity, without the reckoning of it as a merit. It was the
inward assurance of her independence: the young spinster's planting of
the, standard of her proud secret knowledge of what she is, let it be a
thing of worth or what you will, or the world think as it may. That was
her thought.

Her feeling, the much livelier animation, was bitter grief, because her
mistress, unlike herself, had been betrayed by her ignorance of the man
into calling him husband. Just some knowledge of the man! The warning
to the rescue might be there. For nothing did the dear lady weep except
for her brother's evil fortune. The day when she had intelligence from
Mrs. Levellier of her brother's defeat, she wept over the letter on her
knees long hours. 'Me, my child, my brother!' she cried more than once.
She had her suspicion of the earl then, and instantly, as her loving
servant had. The suspicion was now no dark light, but a clear day-beam
to Madge. She adopted Kit's word of Lord Fleetwood. 'A black nobleman
he is! he is!' Her mistress had written like a creature begging him for
money. He did not deign a reply. To her! When he had seen good proof
she was the bravest woman on earth; and she rushed at death to save a
child, a common child; as people say. And who knows but she saved that
husband of hers, too, from bites might have sent him out of the world