the clouds off our rainy quarter, similar in every way to the day of her
stepping on English soil and saying: 'It is a dark land.' For the heart
is truly declared to be our colourist. A day having the gale in its
breast, sweeping the whole country and bending the trees for the twigs to
hiss like spray of the billows around our island, was a day of golden
splendour to the young bride of the Earl of Fleetwood, though he scarcely
addressed one syllable to her, and they sat side by side all but dumb,
he like a coachman driving an unknown lady fare, on a morning after a
night when his wife's tongue may have soured him for the sex.




CHAPTER XIV

A PENDANT OF THE FOREGOING

Mention has been omitted or forgotten by the worthy Dame, in her vagrant
fowl's treatment of a story she cannot incubate, will not relinquish, and
may ultimately addle, that the bridegroom, after walking with a
disengaged arm from the little village church at Croridge to his coach
and four at the cross of the roads to Lekkatts and the lowland, abruptly,
and as one pursuing a deferential line of conduct he had prescribed to
himself, asked his bride, what seat she would prefer.

He shouted: 'Ives!'

A person inside the coach appeared to be effectually roused.

The glass of the window dropped. The head of a man emerged. It was the