'Dear me!' quoth Fleetwood, and he murmured politely and cursorily,
attentive to his coachman business. She had a voice that clove the noise
of the wheels, and she had a desire to talk--that was evident. Talk of
her father set her prattling. It became clear also to his not dishonest,
his impressionable mind, that her baby English might be natural. Or she
was mildly playing on it, to give herself an air.

He had no remembrance of such baby English at Baden. There, however,
she was in a state of enthusiasm--the sort of illuminated transparency
they show at the end of fireworks. Mention of her old scapegrace of a
father lit her up again. The girl there and the girl here were no doubt
the same. It could not be said that she had duped him; he had done it
for himself--acted on by a particular agency. This creature had not the
capacity to dupe. He had armed a bluntwitted young woman with his
idiocy, and she had dealt the stroke; different in scarce a degree by
nature from other young women of prey.

But her look at times, and now and then her voice, gave sign that she
counted on befooling him as well, to reconcile him to his bondage. The
calculation was excessive. No woman had done it yet. Idiocy plunged him
the step which reawakened understanding; and to keep his whole mind alert
on guard against any sort of satisfaction with his bargain, he frankly
referred to the cause. Not female arts, but nature's impulses, it was
his passion for the wondrous in the look of a woman's face, the new
morning of the idea of women in the look, and the peep into imaginary
novel character, did the trick of enslaving him. Call it idiocy. Such
it was. Once acknowledged, it is not likely to recur. An implacable
reason sits in its place, with a keen blade for efforts to carry the
imposture further afield or make it agreeable. Yet, after giving his
word to Lord Levellier, he had prodded himself to think the burden of