earl. 'I drove down there yesterday. I saw the lady calling herself
Countess of Fleetwood. By right? She was a Miss Kirby.'

'She has the right,' Fleetwood said, standing well up out of a discharge
of musketry.

'Marriage not contested. You knew of her being in that place?--I can't
describe it.'

'Your ladyship will pardon me?'

London's frontier of barbarism was named for him again, and in a tone to
penetrate.

He refrained from putting the question of how she had come there.

As iron as he looked, he said: 'She stays there by choice.'

The great lady tapped her foot on the floor.

'You are not acquainted with the district.'

'One of my men comes out of it.'

'The coming out of it ! . . . However, I understand her story, that
she travelled from a village inn, where she had been left-without
resources. She waited weeks; I forget how many. She has a description
of maid in attendance on her. She came to London to find her husband.
You were at the mines, we heard. Her one desire is to meet her husband.
But, goodness! Fleetwood, why do you frown? You acknowledge the