The spell she cast had likewise power to raise him clean out of a
neighbourhood hinting Erebus to the young man with thirst for air,
solitudes, and colour. Scarce imaginable as she was, she reigned here,
in the idea of her, more fixedly than where she had been visible; as it
were, by right of her being celestially removed from the dismal place.
He was at the same time not insensible to his father's contented
ministrations among these homes of squalor; they pricked the curiosity,
which was in the youthful philosopher a form of admiration. For his
father, like all Welshmen, loved the mountains. Yet here he lived,
exhorting, ministering, aiding, supported up to high good cheer by some,
it seemed, superhuman backbone of uprightness;--his religious faith?
Well, if so, the thing might be studied. But things of the frozen
senses, lean and hueless things, were as repellent to Gower's imagination
as his father's dishes to an epicure. What he envied was, the worthy old
man's heart of feeling for others: his feeling at present for the girl
Sarah Winch and her sister Madge, who had not been heard of since she
started for the fight. Mr. Woodseer had written to her relatives at the
Wells, receiving no consolatory answer.

He was relieved at last; and still a little perplexed. Madge had
returned, he informed Gower. She was well, she was well in health; he
had her assurances that she was not excited about herself.

'She has brought a lady with her, a great lady to lodge with her. She
has brought the Countess of Fleetwood to lodge with her.'

Gower heard those words from his father; and his father repeated them.
To the prostrate worshipper of the Countess of Fleetwood, they were a
blow on the head; madness had set in here, was his first recovering