word with her, I plainly said--never mind; good-night. If we meet in the
morning, let this business rest until it 's done. I must drive to help
poor Chums and see about the Inquest.'

Fleetwood nodded from the doorway. Gower was left with humming ears.




CHAPTER XL

RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS

They went to their beds doomed to lie and roam as the solitaries of a
sleepless night. They met next day like a couple emerging from sirocco
deserts, indisposed for conversation or even short companionship, much of
the night's dry turmoil in their heads. Each would have preferred the
sight of an enemy; and it was hardly concealed by them, for they inclined
to regard one another as the author of their infernal passage through the
drear night's wilderness.

Fleetwood was the civiller; his immediate prospective duties being clear,
however abhorrent. But he had inflicted a monstrous disturbance on the
man he meant in his rash, decisive way to elevate, if not benefit.
Gower's imagination, foreign to his desires and his projects, was playing
juggler's tricks with him, dramatizing upon hypotheses, which mounted in
stages and could pretend to be soberly conceivable, assuming that the
earl's wild hints overnight were a credible basis. He transported
himself to his first view of the Countess Livia, the fountain of similes
born of his prostrate adoration, close upon the invasion and capture of