Fleetwood went his way to Lady Arpington almost complacently, having fought and laid his wilder self. He might be likened to the doctor's patient entering the chemist's shop, with a prescription for a drug of healing virtue, upon which the palate is as little consulted as a robustious lollypop boy in the household of ceremonial parents, who have rung for the troop of their orderly domestics to sit in a row and hearken the intonation of good words. CHAPTER XXII A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY The bow, the welcome, and the introductory remarks passed rapidly as the pull at two sides of a curtain opening on a scene that stiffens courtliness to hard attention. After the names of Admiral Baldwin and 'the Mr. Woodseer,' the name of Whitechapel was mentioned by Lady Arpington. It might have been the name of any other place. 'Ah, so far, then, I have to instruct you,' she said, observing the young 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 marriage, she has the name of the church; she was married out of that old Lord Levellier's house. You drove her--I won't repeat the flighty business. You left her, and she did her best to follow you. Will the young men of our time not learn that life is no longer a game when they have a woman for partner in the match! You don't complain of her flavour of a foreign manner? She can't be so very . . . Admiral Baldwin's daughter has married her brother; and he is a military officer. She has germs of breeding, wants only a little rub of the world to smooth her. Speak to the point:--do you meet her here? Do you refuse?' 'At present? I do.' 'Something has to be done.' 'She was bound to stay where I left her.' 'You are bound to provide for her becomingly.' 'Provision shall be made, of course.' 'The story will . . . unless--and quickly, too.' I know, I know!'