[The Amazing Marriage by George Meredith]@TWC D-Link bookThe Amazing Marriage CHAPTER XIII 15/20
3: 'MY LORD: I drive to your church-door on the fourteenth of the month at ten A.M., to keep my appointment with Miss C.J.Kirby, if I do not blunder the initials. 'Your lordship's obedient servant, 'FLEETWOOD.' That letter will ever be a treasured family possession with us. That letter was dated from Lord Fleetwood's Kentish mansion, Esslemont, the tenth of the month.
He must have quitted London for Esslemont, for change of scene, for air, the moment after the news of Henrietta's marriage.
Carinthia Jane received the summons without transmission of the letter from her uncle on the morning of the twelfth.
It was a peremptory summons. Unfortunately, Admiral Fakenham, a real knight and chevalier of those past times, would not let her mount the downs to have her farewell view of the big ships unaccompanied by him; and partly and largely in pure chivalry, no doubt; but her young idea of England's grandeur, as shown in her great vessels of war, thrilled him, too, and restored his youthful enthusiasm for his noble profession or made it effervesce. However it was, he rode beside her and rejoiced to hear the young girl's talk of her father as a captain of one of England's thunderers, and of the cruelty of that Admiralty to him: at which Admiral Baldwin laughed, but had not the heart to disagree with her, for he could belabour the Admiralty in season, cause or no cause.
Altogether he much enjoyed the ride, notwithstanding intimations of the approach of 'his visitor,' as he called his attacks of gout. Riding home, however, the couple passed through a heavy rainfall, and the next day, when he was to drive with the bride to Lekkatts, gout, the fiercest he had ever known, chained him fast to his bed.
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