her breast. She slipped away.

'It's a day that has come round to be repaired, Lady Fleetwood,' said
Gower. 'If you will. Will you not? He has had a blow--the death of a
friend, violent death. It has broken him. He wants a month or so in
your mountains. I have thought him hard to deal with; he is humane.
His enormous wealth has been his tempter. Madge and I will owe him our
means of livelihood, enough for cottagers, until I carve my way. His
feelings are much more independent of his rank than those of most
noblemen. He will repeat your kind words to Madge and me; I am sure of
it. He has had heavy burdens; he is young, hardly formed yet. He needs
a helper; I mean, one allied to him. You forgive me? I left him with a
Catholic lord for comforter, who regards my prescript of the study of
Nature, when we're in grief, as about the same as an offer of a dish of
cold boiled greens. Silver and ivory images are more consoling. Neither
he nor I can offer the right thing for Lord Fleetwood. It will be found
here. And then your mountains. More than I, nearly as much as you,
he has a poet's ardour for mountain land. He and Mr. Wythan would soon
learn to understand one another on that head, if not as to management of
mines.'

The pleading was crafty, and it was penetrative in the avoidance of
stress. Carinthia shook herself to feel moved. The endeavour chilled
her to a notion that she was but half alive. She let the question
approach her, whether Chillon could pardon Lord Fleetwood. She, with no
idea of benignness, might speak pardon's word to him, on a late autumn
evening years hence, perhaps, or to his friends to-morrow, if he would
considerately keep distant. She was upheld by the thought of her
brother's more honourable likeness to their father, in the certainty of
his refusal to speak pardon's empty word or touch an offending hand,