Irony perusing History offers the beaten and indolent a sugary acid in
the indication of the spites and the pranks, the whims and the tastes,
at the springs of main events. It is, taken by itself, destructive
nourishment. But those who labour in the field to shovel the clods of
earth to History, would be wiser of their fellows for a minor dose of it.
Mr. Howell Edwards consulting with Mr. Owain Wythan on the necessity,
that the earl should instantly keep his promise to appear among the men
and stop the fermentation, as in our younger days a lordly owner still
might do by small concessions and the physical influence--the nerve-
charm--could suppose him to be holding aloof for his pleasure or his
pride; perhaps because of illness or inability to conceive the actual
situation at a distance. He mentioned the presence of the countess, and
Mr. Wythan mentioned it, neither of them thinking a rational man would so
play the lunatic as to let men starve, and wreck precious mines, for the
sake of avoiding her.

Sullen days went by. On these days of the slate-cloud or the leaden-
winged, Carinthia walked over the hills to her staring or down-eyed
silent people, admitted without a welcome at some doors, rejected at
some. Her baskets from the castle were for the most part received as
graciously. She continued to direct them for delivery where they were
needed, and understood why a charity that supplied the place of justice
was not thanked. She and her people here were one regarding the master,
as she had said. They could not hurt her sensitiveness, she felt too
warmly with them. And here it was not the squalid, flat, bricked east-
corner of London at the close of her daily pilgrimage. Up from the
solitary street of the slate-roofs, she mounted a big hill and had the
life of high breathing. A perpetual escape out of the smoky, grimy city
mazes was trumpeted to her in the winds up there: a recollected contrast
lightened the skyless broad spaces overhead almost to sunniness. Having