initial commit of ebook 4482HEADmain

2 files changed, 12540 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/gm88v10.txt b/old/gm88v10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d090608
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/gm88v10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12540 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Lord Ormont and his Aminta, Complete
+by George Meredith
+#88 in our series by George Meredith
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg file.
+
+We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is, on your own disk,
+thereby keeping an electronic path open for future readers.
+
+Please do not remove this.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to
+view the etext. Do not change or edit it without written permission.
+The words are carefully chosen to provide users with the information
+they need to understand what they may and may not do with the etext.
+To encourage this, we have moved most of the information to the end,
+rather than having it all here at the beginning.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These Etexts Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get etexts, and
+further information, is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
+organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
+Find out about how to make a donation at the bottom of this file.
+
+
+
+Title: Lord Ormont and his Aminta, Complete
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+Release Date: September, 2003 [Etext #4482]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 25, 2002]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext Lord Ormont and his Aminta, All, by Meredith
+**********This file should be named gm88v10.txt or gm88v10.zip**********
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, gm88v11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, gm88v10a.txt
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep etexts in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+The "legal small print" and other information about this book
+may now be found at the end of this file.  Please read this
+important information, as it gives you specific rights and
+tells you about restrictions in how the file may be used.
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by Pat Castevans  <patcat@ctnet.net>
+and David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA, Complete
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+BOOK 1.
+I.        LOVE AT A SCHOOL
+II.       LADY CHARLOTTE
+III.      THE TUTOR
+IV.       RECOGNITION
+V.        IN WHICH THE SHADES OF BROWNY AND MATEY ADVANCE AND RETIRE
+
+BOOK 2.
+VI.       IN A MOOD OF LANGUOR
+VII.      EXHIBITS EFFECTS OF A PRATTLER'S DOSES
+VIII.     MRS. LAWRENCE FINCHLEY
+IX.       A FLASH OF THE BRUISED WARRIOR
+X.        A SHORT PASSAGE IN THE GAME PLAYED BY TWO
+XI.       THE SECRETARY TAKEN AS AN ANTIDOTE
+
+BOOK 3.
+XII.      MORE OF CUPER'S BOYS
+XIII.     WAR AT OLMER
+XIV.      OLD LOVERS NEW FRIENDS
+XV.       SHOWING A SECRET FISHED WITHOUT ANGLING
+XVI.      ALONG TWO ROADS TO STEIGNTON
+
+BOOK 4.
+XVII.     LADY CHARLOTTE'S TRIUMPH
+XVIII.    A SCENE ON THE ROAD BACK
+XIX.      THE PURSUERS
+XX.       AT THE SIGN OF THE JOLLY CRICKETERS
+XXI.      UNDER-CURRENTS IN THE MINDS OF LADY CHARLOTTE AND LORD ORMONT
+XXII.     TREATS OF THE FIRST DAY OF THE CONTENTION OF BROTHER AND SISTER
+XXIII.    THE ORMONT JEWELS
+
+BOOK 5.
+XXIV.     LOVERS MATED
+XXXV.     PREPARATIONS FOR A RESOLVE
+XXVI.     VISITS OF FAREWELL
+XXVII.    A MARINE DUET
+XXVIII.   THE PLIGHTING
+XXIX.     AMINTA TO HER LORD
+XXX.      CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA.
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+I.        LOVE AT A SCHOOL
+II.       LADY CHARLOTTE
+III.      THE TUTOR
+IV.       RECOGNITION
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+LOVE AT A SCHOOL
+
+A procession of schoolboys having to meet a procession of schoolgirls on
+the Sunday's dead march, called a walk, round the park, could hardly go
+by without dropping to a hum in its chatter, and the shot of incurious
+half-eyes the petticoated creatures--all so much of a swarm unless you
+stare at them like lanterns.  The boys cast glance because it relieved
+their heaviness; things were lumpish and gloomy that day of the week.
+The girls, who sped their peep of inquisition before the moment of
+transit, let it be seen that they had minds occupied with thoughts of
+their own.
+
+Our gallant fellows forgot the intrusion of the foreign as soon as it had
+passed.  A sarcastic discharge was jerked by chance at the usher and the
+governess--at the old game, it seemed; or why did they keep steering
+columns to meet?  There was no fun in meeting; it would never be
+happening every other Sunday, and oftener, by sheer toss-penny accident.
+They were moved like pieces for the pleasure of these two.
+
+Sometimes the meeting occurred twice during the stupid march-out, when it
+became so nearly vexatious to boys almost biliously oppressed by the
+tedium of a day merely allowing them to shove the legs along, ironically
+naming it animal excise, that some among them pronounced the sham
+variation of monotony to be a bothering nuisance if it was going to
+happen every Sunday, though Sunday required diversions.  They hated the
+absurdity in this meeting and meeting; for they were obliged to
+anticipate it, as a part of their ignominious weekly performance; and
+they could not avoid reflecting on it, as a thing done over again: it had
+them in front and in rear; and it was a kind of broadside mirror,
+flashing at them the exact opposite of themselves in an identically
+similar situation, that forced a resemblance.
+
+Touching the old game, Cuper's fold was a healthy school, owing to the
+good lead of the head boy, Matey Weyburn, a lad with a heart for games
+to bring renown, and no thought about girls.  His emulation, the fellows
+fancied, was for getting the school into a journal of the Sports.  He
+used to read one sent him by a sporting officer of his name, and talk
+enviously of public schools, printed whatever they did--a privilege and
+dignity of which, they had unrivalled enjoyment in the past, days, when
+wealth was more jealously exclusive; and he was always prompting for
+challenges and saving up to pay expenses; and the fellows were to laugh
+at kicks and learn the art of self-defence--train to rejoice in whipcord
+muscles.  The son of a tradesman, if a  boy fell under the imputation,
+was worthy of honour with him, let the fellow but show grip and
+toughness.  He loathed a skulker, and his face was known for any boy who
+would own to fatigue or confess himself beaten.  "Go to bed," was one of
+his terrible stings.  Matey was good at lessons, too--liked them; liked
+Latin and Greek; would help a poor stumbler.
+
+Where he did such good work was in sharpening the fellows to excel.  He
+kept them to the grindstone, so that they had no time for rusty brooding;
+and it was fit done by exhortations off a pedestal, like St. Paul at the
+Athenians, it breathed out of him every day of the week.  He carried a
+light for followers.  Whatever he demanded of them, he himself did it
+easily.  He would say to boys, "You're going to be men," meaning
+something better than women.  There was a notion that Matey despised
+girls.  Consequently, never much esteemed, they were in disfavour.  The
+old game was mentioned only because of a tradition of an usher and
+governess leering sick eyes until they slunk away round a corner and
+married, and set up a school for themselves--an emasculate ending.
+Comment on it came of a design to show that the whole game had been
+examined dismissed as uninteresting and profitless.
+
+One of the boys alluded in Matey's presence to their general view upon
+the part played by womankind on the stage, confident of a backing; and he
+had it, in a way: their noble chief whisked the subject, as not worth a
+discussion; but he turned to a younger chap, who said he detested girls,
+and asked him how about a sister at home; and the youngster coloured, and
+Matey took him and spun him round, with a friendly tap on the shoulder.
+
+Odd remarks at intervals caused it to be suspected that he had ideas
+concerning girls.  They were high as his head above the school; and there
+they were left, with Algebra and Homer, for they were not of a sort to
+inflame; until the boys noticed how he gave up speaking, and fell to hard
+looking, though she was dark enough to get herself named Browny.  In the
+absence of a fair girl of equal height to set beside her, Browny shone.
+
+She had a nice mouth, ready for a smile at the corners, or so it was
+before Matey let her see that she was his mark.  Now she kept her mouth
+asleep and her eyes half down, up to the moment of her nearing to pass,
+when the girl opened on him, as if lifting her eyelids from sleep to the
+window, a full side--look, like a throb, and no disguise--no slyness or
+boldness either, not a bit of languishing.  You might think her heart
+came quietly out.
+
+The look was like the fall of light on the hills from the first of
+morning.  It lasted half a minute, and left a ruffle for a good half-
+hour.  Even the younger fellows, without knowing what affected them, were
+moved by the new picture of a girl, as if it had been a frontispiece of a
+romantic story some day to be read.  She looked compelled to look, but
+consenting and unashamed; at home in submission; just the look that wins
+observant boys, shrewd as dogs to read by signs, if they are interested
+in the persons.  They read Browny's meaning: that Matey had only to come
+and snatch her; he was her master, and she was a brave girl, ready to go
+all over the world with him; had taken to him as he to her, shot for
+shot.  Her taking to the pick of the school was a capital proof that she
+was of the right sort.  To be sure, she could not much help herself.
+
+Some of the boys regretted her not being fair.  But, as they felt, and
+sought to explain, in the manner of the wag of a tail, with elbows and
+eyebrows to one another's understanding, fair girls could never have let
+fly such look; fair girls are softer, woollier, and when they mean to
+look serious, overdo it by craping solemn; or they pinafore a jigging
+eagerness, or hoist propriety on a chubby flaxen grin; or else they dart
+an eye, or  they mince and prim and pout, and are sigh-away and dying-
+ducky, given to girls' tricks.  Browny, after all, was the girl for
+Matey.
+
+She won a victory right away and out of hand, on behalf of her cloud-and-
+moon sisters, as against the sunny-meadowy; for slanting intermediates
+are not espied of boys in anything: conquered by Browny; they went over
+to her colour, equal to arguing, that Venus at her mightiest must have
+been dark, or she would not have stood a comparison with the forest
+Goddess of the Crescent, swanning it through a lake--on the leap for run
+of the chase--watching the dart, with her humming bow at breast.  The
+fair are simple sugary thing's, prone to fat, like broad-sops in milk;
+but the others are milky nuts, good to bite, Lacedaemonian virgins, hard
+to beat, putting us on our mettle; and they are for heroes, and they can
+be brave.  So these boys felt, conquered by Browny.  A sneaking native
+taste for the forsaken side, known to renegades, hauled at them if her
+image waned during the week; and it waned a little, but Sunday restored
+and stamped it.
+
+By a sudden turn the whole upper-school had fallen to thinking of girls,
+and the meeting on the Sunday was a prospect.  One of the day-boarders
+had a sister in the seminary of Miss Vincent.  He was plied to obtain
+information concerning Browny's name and her parents.  He had it pat to
+hand in answer.  No parents came to see her; an aunt came now and then.
+Her aunt's name was not wanted.  Browny's name was Aminta Farrell.
+
+Farrell might pass; Aminta was debated.  This female Christian name had
+a foreign twang; it gave dissatisfaction.  Boy after boy had a try at it,
+with the same effect: you could not speak the name without a pursing of
+the month and a puckering of the nose, beastly to see, as one little
+fellow reminded them on a day when Matey was in more than common favour,
+topping a pitch of rapture, for clean bowling, first ball, middle stump
+on the kick, the best bat of the other eleven in a match; and, says this
+youngster, drawling, soon after the cheers and claps had subsided to
+business, "Aminta."
+
+He made it funny by saying it as if to himself and the ground, in a
+subdued way, while he swung his leg on a half-circle, like a skater,
+hands in pockets.  He was a sly young rascal, innocently precocious
+enough, and he meant no disrespect either to Browny or to Matey; but he
+had to run for it, his delivery of the name being so like what was in the
+breasts of the senior fellows, as to the inferiority of any Aminta to old
+Matey, that he set them laughing; and Browny was on the field, to reprove
+them, left of the tea-booth, with her school-mates, part of her head
+under a scarlet parasol.
+
+A girl with such a name as Aminta might not be exactly up to the standard
+of old Matey, still, if he thought her so and she had spirit, the school
+was bound to subscribe; and that look of hers warranted her for taking
+her share in the story, like the brigand's wife loading gnus for him
+while he knocks over the foremost carabineer on the mountain-ledge below,
+who drops on his back with a hellish expression.
+
+Browny was then clearly seen all round, instead of only front-face,
+as on the Sunday in the park, when fellows could not spy backward after
+passing.  The pleasure they had in seeing her all round involved no fresh
+stores of observation, for none could tell how she tied her back-hair,
+which was the question put to them by a cynic of a boy, said to be queasy
+with excess of sisters.  They could tell that she was tall for a girl,
+or tallish--not a maypole.  She drank a cup of tea, and ate a slice of
+bread-and-butter; no cake.
+
+She appeared undisturbed when Matey, wearing his holiday white ducks,
+and all aglow, entered the booth.  She was not expected to faint, only
+she stood for the foreign Aminta more than for their familiar Browny in
+his presence.  Not a sign of the look which had fired the school did she
+throw at him.  Change the colour and you might compare her to a lobster
+fixed on end, with a chin and no eyes.  Matey talked to Miss Vincent up
+to the instant of his running to bat.  She would have liked to guess how
+he knew she had a brother on the medical staff of one of the regiments in
+India: she asked him twice, and his cheeks were redder than cricket in
+the sun.  He said he read all the reports from India, and asked her
+whether she did not admire Lord Ormont, our general of cavalry, whose
+charge at the head of fifteen hundred horse in the last great battle
+shattered the enemy's right wing, and gave us the victory--rolled him up
+and stretched him out like a carpet for dusting.  Miss Vincent exclaimed
+that it was really strange, now, he should speak of Lord Ormont, for she
+had been speaking of him herself in morning to one of her young ladies,
+whose mind was bent on his heroic deeds.  Matey turned his face to the
+group of young ladies, quite pleased that one of them loved his hero; and
+he met a smile here and there--not from Miss Aminta Farrell.  She was a
+complete disappointment to the boys that day.  "Aminta" was mouthed at
+any allusions to her.
+
+So, she not being a match for Matey, they let her drop.  The flush that
+had swept across the school withered to a dry recollection, except when
+on one of their Sunday afternoons she fanned the desert.  Lord Ormont
+became the subject of inquiry and conversation; and for his own sake--not
+altogether to gratify Matey.  The Saturday autumn evening's walk home,
+after the race out to tea at a distant village, too late in the year for
+cricket, too early for regular football, suited Matey, going at long
+strides, for the story of his hero's adventures; and it was nicer than
+talk about girls, and puzzling.  Here lay a clear field; for he had the
+right to speak of a cavalry officer: his father died of wounds in the
+service, and Matey naturally intended to join the Dragoons; if he could
+get enough money to pay for mess, he said, laughing.  Lord Ormont was his
+pattern of a warrior.  We had in him a lord who cast off luxury to live
+like a Spartan when under arms, with a passion to serve his country and
+sustain the glory of our military annals.  He revived respect for the
+noble class in the hearts of Englishmen.  He was as good an authority on
+horseflesh as any Englishman alive; the best for the management of
+cavalry: there never was a better cavalry leader.  The boys had come to
+know that Browny admired Lord Ormont, so they saw a double reason why
+Matey should; and walking home at his grand swing in the October dusk,
+their school hero drew their national hero closer to them.
+
+Every fellow present was dead against the usher, Mr. Shalders, when he
+took advantage of a pause to strike in with his "Murat!"
+
+He harped on Murat whenever he had a chance.  Now he did it for the
+purpose of casting eclipse upon Major-General Lord Ormont, the son and
+grandson of English earls; for he was an earl by his title, and Murat was
+the son of an innkeeper.  Shalders had to admit that Murat might have
+served in the stables when a boy.  Honour to Murat, of course, for
+climbing the peaks!  Shalders, too, might interest him in military
+affairs and Murat; he did no harm, and could be amusing.  It rather added
+to his amount of dignity.  It was rather absurd, at the same time, for an
+English usher to be spouting and glowing about a French general, who had
+been a stable-boy and became a king, with his Murat this, Murat that, and
+hurrah Murat in red and white and green uniform, tunic and breeches, and
+a chimney-afire of feathers; and how the giant he was charged at the head
+of ten thousand horse, all going like a cataract under a rainbow over the
+rocks, right into the middle of the enemy and through; and he a spark
+ahead, and the enemy streaming on all sides flat away, as you see puffed
+smoke and flame of a bonfire.  That was fun to set boys jigging.  No
+wonder how in Russia the Cossacks feared him, and scampered from the
+shadow of his plumes--were clouds flying off his breath!  That was a
+fine warm picture for the boys on late autumn or early winter evenings,
+Shalders warming his back at the grate, describing bivouacs in the snow.
+They liked well enough to hear him when he was not opposing Matey and
+Lord Ormont.  He perked on his toes, and fetched his hand from behind him
+to flourish it when his Murat came out.  The speaking of his name clapped
+him on horseback--the only horseback he ever knew.  He was as fond of
+giving out the name Murat as you see in old engravings of tobacco-shops
+men enjoying the emission of their whiff of smoke.
+
+Matey was not inclined to class Lord Ormont alongside Murat, a first-rate
+horseman and an eagle-eye, as Shalders rightly said; and Matey agreed
+that forty thousand cavalry under your orders is a toss above fifteen
+hundred; but the claim for a Frenchman of a superlative merit to swallow
+and make nothing of the mention of our best cavalry generals irritated
+him to call Murat a mountebank.
+
+Shalders retorted, that Lord Ormont was a reprobate.
+
+Matey hoped he would some day write us an essay on the morale of
+illustrious generals of cavalry; and Shalders told him he did not advance
+his case by talking nonsense.
+
+Each then repeated to the boys a famous exploit of his hero. Their
+verdict was favourable to Lord Ormont.  Our English General learnt riding
+before he was ten years old, on the Pampas, where you ride all day, and
+cook your steak for your dinner between your seat and your saddle.  He
+rode with his father and his uncle, Muncastle, the famous traveller, into
+Paraguay.  He saw fighting before he was twelve.  Before he was twenty he
+was learning outpost duty in the Austrian frontier cavalry.  He served in
+the Peninsula, served in Canada, served in India, volunteered for any
+chance of distinction.  No need to say much of his mastering the picked
+Indian swordsmen in single combat: he knew their trick, and was quick to
+save his reins when they made a dash threatening the headstroke--about
+the same as disabling sails in old naval engagements.
+
+That was the part for the officer; we are speaking of the General.  For
+that matter, he had as keen an eye for the field and the moment for his
+arm to strike as any Murat.  One world have liked to see Murat matched
+against the sabre of a wily Rajpoot!  As to campaigns and strategy, Lord
+Ormont's head was a map.  What of Murat and Lord Ormont horse to horse
+and sword to sword?  Come, imagine that, if you are for comparisons.  And
+if Lord Ormont never headed a lot of thousands, it does not prove he was
+unable.  Lord Ormont was as big as Murat.  More, he was a Christian to
+his horses.  How about Murat in that respect?  Lord Ormont cared for his
+men: did Murat so particularly much?  And he was as cunning fronting
+odds, and a thunderbolt at the charge.  Why speak of him in the past?
+He is an English lord, a lord by birth, and he is alive; things may be
+expected of him to-morrow or next day.
+
+Shalders here cut Matey short by meanly objecting to that.
+
+"Men are mortal," he said, with a lot of pretended stuff, deploring our
+human condition in the elegy strain; and he fell to reckoning the English
+hero's age--as that he, Lord Ormont, had been a name in the world for the
+last twenty-five years or more. The noble lord could be no chicken.  We
+are justified in calculating, by the course of nature, that his term of
+activity is approaching, or has approached, or, in fact, has drawn to its
+close.
+
+"If your estimate, sir, approaches to correctness," rejoined Matey--
+tellingly, his comrades thought.
+
+"Sixty, as you may learn some day, is a serious age, Matthew Weyburn."
+
+Matey said he should be happy to reach it with half the honours Lord
+Ormont had won.
+
+"Excepting the duels," Shalders had the impudence to say.
+
+"If the cause is a good one!" cried Matey.
+
+"The cause, or Lord Ormont has been maligned, was reprehensible in the
+extremest degree."  Shalders cockhorsed on his heels to his toes and back
+with a bang.
+
+"What was the cause, if you please, sir?" a boy, probably naughty,
+inquired; and as Shalders did not vouchsafe a reply, the bigger boys
+knew.
+
+They revelled in the devilish halo of skirts on the whirl encircling Lord
+Ormont's laurelled head.
+
+That was a spark in their blood struck from a dislike of the tone assumed
+by Mr. Shalders to sustain his argument; with his "men are mortal," and
+talk of a true living champion as "no chicken," and the wordy drawl over
+"justification for calculating the approach of a close to a term of
+activity"--in the case of a proved hero!
+
+Guardians of boys should make sure that the boys are on their side before
+they raise the standard of virtue.  Nor ought they to summon morality for
+support of a polemic.  Matey Weyburn's object of worship rode superior to
+a morality puffing its phrasy trumpet.  And, somehow, the sacrifice of an
+enormous number of women to Lord Ormont's glory seemed natural; the very
+thing that should be, in the case of a first-rate military hero and
+commander--Scipio notwithstanding.  It brightens his flame, and it is
+agreeable to them.  That is how they come to distinction: they have no
+other chance; they are only women; they are mad to be singed, and they
+rush pelf-mall, all for the honour of the candle.
+
+Shortly after this discussion Matey was heard informing some of the
+bigger fellows he could tell them positively that Lord Ormont's age was
+under fifty-four--the prime of manhood, and a jolly long way off death!
+The greater credit to him, therefore, if he bad been a name in the world
+for anything like the period Shalders insinuated, "to get himself out of
+a sad quandary."  Matey sounded the queer word so as to fix it sticking
+to the usher, calling him Mr. Peter Bell Shalders, at which the boys
+roared, and there was a question or two about names, which belonged to
+verses, for people caring to read poems.
+
+To the joy of the school he displayed a greater knowledge of Murat than
+Shalders had: named the different places in Europe where Lord Ormont and
+Murat were both springing to the saddle at the same time--one a Marshal,
+the other a lieutenant; one a king, to be off his throne any day, the
+other a born English nobleman, seated firm as fate.  And he accused Murat
+of carelessness of his horses, ingratitude to his benefactor, circussy
+style.  Shalders went so far as to defend Murat for attending to the
+affairs of his kingdom, instead of galloping over hedges and ditches to
+swell Napoleon's ranks in distress.  Matey listened to him there; he
+became grave; he nodded like a man saying, "I suppose we must examine
+it in earnest."  The school was damped to hear him calling it a nice
+question.  Still, he said he thought he should have gone; and that
+settled it.
+
+The boys inclined to speak contemptuously of Shalders.  Matey world
+not let them; he contrasted Shalders with the other ushers, who had
+no enthusiasms.  He said enthusiasms were salt to a man; and he liked
+Shalders for spelling at his battles and thinking he understood them, and
+admiring Murat, and leading Virgil and parts of Lucan for his recreation.
+He said he liked the French because they could be splendidly
+enthusiastic.  He almost lost his English flavour when he spoke in
+downright approval of a small French fellow, coming from Orthez, near the
+Pyrenees, for senselessly dashing and kicking at a couple of English who
+jeered to hear Orthez named--a place trampled under Wellington's heels,
+on his march across conquered France.  The foreign little cockerel was a
+clever lad, learning English fast, and anxious to show he had got hold of
+the English trick of not knowing when he was beaten.  His French vanity
+insisted on his engaging the two, though one of them stood aside, and the
+other let him drive his nose all the compass round at a poker fist.  What
+was worse, Matey examined these two, in the interests of fair play, as if
+he doubted.
+
+Little Emile Grenat set matters right with his boast to vindicate his
+country against double the number, and Matey praised him, though he knew
+Emile had been floored without effort by the extension of a single fist.
+He would not hear the French abused; he said they were chivalrous, they
+were fine fellows, topping the world in some things; his father had
+fought them and learnt to respect them.  Perhaps his father had learnt to
+respect Jews, for there was a boy named Abner, he protected, who smelt
+Jewish; he said they ran us Gentiles hard, and carried big guns.
+
+Only a reputation like Matey's could have kept his leadership from a
+challenge.  Joseph Masner, formerly a rival, went about hinting and
+shrugging; all to no purpose, you find boys born to be chiefs.  On the
+day of the snow-fight Matey won the toss, and chose J. Masner first pick;
+and Masner, aged seventeen and some months, big as a navvy, lumbered
+across to him and took his directions, proud to stand in the front
+centre, at the head of the attack, and bear the brunt--just what he was
+fit for, Matey gave no offence by choosing, half-way down the list, his
+little French friend, whom he stationed beside himself, rather off his
+battle-front, as at point at cricket, not quite so far removed.  Two boys
+at his heels piled ammunition.  The sides met midway of a marshy ground,
+where a couple of flat and shelving banks, formed for a broad new road,
+good for ten abreast--counting a step of the slopes--ran transverse; and
+the order of the game was to clear the bank and drive the enemy on to the
+frozen ditch-water.  Miss Vincent heard in the morning from the sister
+of little Collett of the great engagement coming off; she was moved by
+curiosity, and so the young ladies of her establishment beheld the young
+gentlemen of Mr. Cuper's in furious division, and Matey's sore aim and
+hard fling, equal to a slinger's, relieving J. Masner of a foremost
+assailant with a spanker on the nob.  They may have fancied him clever
+for selecting a position rather comfortable, as things went, until they
+had sight of him with his little French ally and two others, ammunition
+boys to rear, descending one bank and scaling another right into the
+flank of the enemy, when his old tower of a Masner was being heavily
+pressed by numbers.  Then came a fight hand to hand, but the enemy stood
+in a clamp; not to split like a nut between crackers, they gave way and
+rolled, backing in lumps from bank to ditch.
+
+The battle was over before the young ladies knew.  They wondered to see
+Matey shuffling on his coat and hopping along at easy bounds to pay his
+respects to Miss Vincent, near whom was Browny; and this time he and
+Browny talked together.  He then introduced little Emile to her.  She
+spoke of Napoleon at Brienne, and complimented Matey.  He said he was
+cavalry, not artillery, that day.  They talked to hear one another's
+voices.  By constantly appealing to Miss Vincent he made their
+conversation together seem as under her conduct; and she took a slide on
+some French phrases with little Emile.  Her young ladies looked shrinking
+and envious to see the fellows wet to the skin, laughing, wrestling,
+linking arms; and some, who were clown-faced  with a wipe of scarlet,
+getting friends to rub their cheeks with snow, all of them happy as
+larks in air, a big tea steaming for them at the school.  Those girls
+had a leap and a fail of the heart, glad to hug themselves in their dry
+clothes, and not so warm as the dripping boys were, nor so madly fond of
+their dress-circle seats to look on at a play they were not allowed even
+to desire to share.  They looked on at blows given and taken in good
+temper, hardship sharpening jollity.  The thought of the difference
+between themselves and the boys must have been something like the tight
+band--call it corset--over the chest, trying to lift and stretch for
+draughts of air.  But Browny's feeling naturally was, that all this
+advantage for the boys came of Matey Weyburn's lead.
+
+Miss Vincent with her young ladies walked off in couples, orderly chicks,
+the usual Sunday march of their every day.  The school was coolish to
+them; one of the fellows hummed bars of some hymn tune, rather faster
+than church.  And next day there was a murmur of letters passing between
+Matey and Browny regularly, little Collett for postman.  Anybody might
+have guessed it, but the report spread a feeling that girls are not the
+entirely artificial beings or flat targets we suppose.  The school began
+to brood, like air deadening on oven-heat.  Winter is hen-mother to the
+idea of love in schools, if the idea has fairly entered. Various girls of
+different colours were selected by boys for animated correspondence, that
+never existed and was vigorously prosecuted, with efforts to repress
+contempt of them in courtship for their affections.  They found their
+part of it by no means difficult when they imagined the lines without
+the words, or, better still, the letter without the lines.  A holy
+satisfaction belonged to the sealed thing; the breaking of the seal and
+inspection of the contents imposed perplexity on that sentiment.  They
+thought of certain possible sentences Matey and Browny would exchange;
+but the plain, conceivable, almost visible, outside of the letter had a
+stronger spell for them than the visionary inside.  This fancied
+contemplation of the love-letter was reversed in them at once by the
+startling news of Miss Vincent's discovery and seizure of the sealed
+thing, and her examination of the burden it contained.  Then their thirst
+was for drama--to see, to drink every wonderful syllable those lovers had
+written.
+
+Miss Vincent's hand was upon one of Matey's letters.  She had come across
+the sister of little Collett, Selina her name was, carrying it.  She saw
+nothing of the others.  Aminta was not the girl to let her.  Nor did Mr.
+Cuper dare demand from Matey a sight or restitution of the young lady's
+half of the correspondence.  He preached heavily at Matey; deplored that
+the boy he most trusted, etc.--the school could have repeated it without
+hearing.  We know the master's lecture in tones--it sings up to sing
+down, and touches nobody.  As soon as he dropped to natural talk, and
+spoke of his responsibility and Miss Vincent's, Matey gave the word of
+a man of honour that he would not seek to communicate farther with Miss
+Farrell at the school.
+
+Now there was a regular thunder-hash among the boys on the rare occasions
+when they met the girls.  All that Matey and Browny were forbidden to
+write they looked--much like what it had been before the discovery;
+and they dragged the boys back from promised instant events.  It was,
+nevertheless, a heaving picture, like the sea in the background of a
+marine piece at the theatre, which rouses anticipations of storm, and
+shows readiness.  Browny's full eyebrow sat on her dark eye like a cloud
+of winter noons over the vanishing sun.  Matey was the prisoner gazing at
+light of a barred window and measuring the strength of the bars.  She
+looked unhappy, but looked unbeaten more.  Her look at him fed the school
+on thoughts of what love really is, when it is not fished out of books
+and poetry.  For though she was pale, starved and pale, they could see
+she was never the one to be sighing; and as for him, he looked ground
+dower all to edge.  However much they puzzled over things, she made them
+feel they were sure, as to her, that she drove straight and meant blood,
+the life or death of it: all her own, if need be, and confidence in the
+captain she had chosen.  She could have been imagined saying, There is a
+storm, but I am ready to embark with you this minute.
+
+That sign of courage in real danger ennobled her among girls.  The name
+Browny was put aside for a respectful Aminta.  Big and bright events to
+come out in the world were hinted, from the love of such a couple.  The
+boys were not ashamed to speak the very word love.  How he does love that
+girl!  Well, and how she loves him!  She did, but the boys had to be
+seeing her look at Matey if they were to put the girl on some balanced
+equality with a fellow she was compelled to love.  It seemed to them that
+he gave, and that she was a creature carried to him, like driftwood along
+the current of the flood, given, in spite of herself.  When they saw
+those eyes of hers they were impressed with an idea of her as a voluntary
+giver too; pretty well the half to the bargain; and it confused their
+notion of feminine inferiority.  They resolved to think her an
+exceptional girl, which, in truth, they could easily do, for none
+but an exceptional girl could win Matey to love her.
+
+Since nothing appeared likely to happen at the school, they speculated
+upon what would occur out in the world, and were assisted to conjecture,
+by a rumour, telling of Aminta Farrell's aunt as a resident at Dover.
+Those were days when the benevolently international M. de Porquet had
+begun to act as interpreter to English schools in the portico of the
+French language; and under his guidance it was asked, in contempt of the
+answer, Combien de postes d'ici a Douvres?  But, accepting the rumour as
+a piece of information, the answer became important.  Ici was twenty
+miles to the north-west of London.  How long would it take Matey to reach
+Donvres?  Or at which of the combien did he intend to waylay and away
+with Aminta?  The boys went about pounding at the interrogative French
+phrase in due sincerity, behind the burlesque of traveller bothering
+coachman.  Matey's designs could be finessed only by a knowledge of his
+character: that he was not the fellow to give up the girl he had taken
+to; and impediments might multiply, but he would bear them down.
+Three days before the break-up of the school another rumour came tearing
+through it: Aminta's aunt had withdrawn her from Miss Vincent's.  And now
+rose the question, two-dozen-mouthed, Did Matey know her address at
+Douvres?  His face grew stringy and his voice harder, and his eyes ready
+to burst from a smother of fire.  All the same, he did his work: he was
+the good old fellow at games, considerate in school affairs, kind to the
+youngsters; he was heard to laugh.  He liked best the company of his
+little French friend from Orthez, over whose shoulder his hand was laid
+sometimes as they strolled and chatted in two languages.  He really went
+a long way to make French fellows popular, and the boys were sorry that
+little Emile was off to finish his foreign education in Germany.  His
+English was pretty good, thanks to Matey.  He went away, promising to
+remember Old England, saying he was French first, and a Briton next.
+He had lots of plunk; which accounted for Matey's choice of him as a
+friend among the juniors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LADY CHARLOTTE
+
+Love-passages at a school must produce a ringing crisis if they are to
+leave the rosy impression which spans the gap of holidays.  Neither Matey
+nor Browny returned to their yoke, and Cuper's boys recollected the
+couple chiefly on Sundays.  They remembered several of Matey's doings and
+sayings: his running and high leaping, his bowling, a maxim or two of
+his, and the tight strong fellow he was; also that the damsel's colour
+distinctly counted for dark.  She became nearly black in their minds.
+Well, and Englishmen have been known to marry Indian princesses: some
+have a liking for negresses.  There are Nubians rather pretty in
+pictures, if you can stand thick lips.  Her colour does not matter,
+provided the girl is of the right sort.  The exchange of letters between
+the lovers was mentioned.  The discovery by Miss Vincent of their cool
+habit of corresponding passed for an incident; and there it remained,
+stiff as a poet, not being heated by a story to run.  So the foregone
+excitement lost warmth, and went out like a winter sun at noon or a match
+lighted before the candle is handy.
+
+Lord Ormont continued to be a subject of discussion from time to time,
+for he was a name in the newspapers; and Mr. Shalders had been worked by
+Matey Weyburn into a state of raw antagonism at the mention of the
+gallant General; he could not avoid sitting in judgement on him.
+
+According to Mr. Shalders, the opinion of all thoughtful people in
+England was with John Company and the better part of the Press to condemn
+Lord Ormont in his quarrel with the Commissioner of one of the Indian
+provinces, who had the support of the Governor of his Presidency and of
+the Viceroy; the latter not unreservedly, yet ostensibly inclined to
+condemn a too prompt military hand.  The Gordian knot of a difficulty cut
+is agreeable in the contemplation of an official chief hesitating to use
+the sword and benefiting by having it done for him.  Lord Ormont
+certainly cut the knot.
+
+Mr. Shalders was cornered by the boys, coming at him one after another
+without a stop, vowing it was the exercise of a military judgement upon
+a military question at a period of urgency, which had brought about the
+quarrel with the Commissioner and the reproof of the Governor.  He
+betrayed the man completely cornered by generalizing.  He said--
+
+"We are a civilian people; we pride ourselves on having civilian
+methods."
+
+"How can that be if we have won India with guns and swords?"
+
+"But that splendid jewel for England's tiara won," said he (and he might
+as well have said crown), "we are bound to sheathe the sword and govern
+by the Book of the Law."
+
+"But if they won't have the Book of the Law!"
+
+"They knew the power behind it."
+
+"Not if we knock nothing harder than the Book of the Law upon their
+skulls."
+
+"Happily for the country, England's councils are not directed by boys!"
+
+"Ah, but we're speaking of India, Mr. Shalders."
+
+"You are presuming to speak of an act of insubordination committed by a
+military officer under civilian command."
+
+"What if we find an influential prince engaged in conspiracy?"
+
+"We look for proof."
+
+"Suppose we have good proof?"
+
+"We summon him to exonerate himself."
+
+"No; we mount and ride straight away into his territory, spot the
+treason, deport him, and rule in his place!"
+
+It was all very well for Mr. Shalders to say he talked to boys; he was
+cornered again, as his shrug confessed.
+
+The boys asked among themselves whether he would have taken the same view
+if his Murat had done it!
+
+These illogical boys fought for Matey Weyburn in their defence of Lord
+Ormont.  Somewhere, they wee sure, old Matey was hammering to the same
+end--they could hear him.  Thought of him inspired them to unwonted
+argumentative energy, that they might support his cause; and scatter the
+gloomy prediction of the school, as going to the dogs now Matey had left.
+
+The subject provoked everywhere in Great Britain a division similar to
+that between master and boys at Cuper's establishment: one party for our
+modern English magisterial methods with Indians, the other for the
+decisive Oriental at the early time, to suit their native tastes; and the
+Book of the Law is to be conciliatingly addressed to their sentiments by
+a benign civilizing Power, or the sword is out smartly at the hint of a
+warning to protect the sword's conquests.  Under one aspect we appear
+potteringly European; under another, drunk of the East.
+
+Lord Ormont's ride at the head of two hundred horsemen across a stretch
+of country including hill and forest, to fall like a bolt from the blue
+on the suspected Prince in the midst of his  gathering warriors, was a
+handsome piece of daring, and the high-handed treatment of the Prince was
+held by his advocates to be justified by the provocation, and the result.
+He scattered an unprepared body of many hundreds, who might have
+enveloped him, and who would presumptively have stood their ground, had
+they not taken his handful to be the advance of regiments.  These are the
+deeds that win empires! the argument in his favour ran.  Are they of a
+character to maintain empires? the counter-question was urged.  Men of a
+deliberative aspect were not wanting in approval of the sharp and summary
+of the sword in air when we have to deal with Indians.  They chose to
+regard it as a matter of the dealing with Indians, and put aside the
+question of the contempt of civil authority.
+
+Counting the cries, Lord Ormont won his case.  Festival aldermen, smoking
+clubmen, buckskin squires, obsequious yet privately excitable tradesmen,
+sedentary coachmen and cabmen, of Viking descent, were set to think like
+boys about him: and the boys, the women, and the poets formed a tipsy
+chorea.  Journalists, on the whole, were fairly halved, as regarded
+numbers.  In relation to weight, they were with the burgess and the
+presbyter; they preponderated heavily in the direction of England's
+burgess view of all cases disputed between civilian and soldier.
+But that was when the peril was over.
+
+Admirers of Lord Ormont enjoyed a perusal of a letter addressed by him to
+the burgess's journal; and so did his detractors.  The printing of it was
+an act of editorial ruthlessness.  The noble soldier had no mould in his
+intellectual or educational foundry for the casting of sentences; and the
+editor's leading type to the letter, without further notice of the
+writer--who was given a prominent place or scaffolding for the execution
+of himself publicly, if it pleased him to do that thing--tickled the
+critical mind.  Lord Ormont wrote intemperately.
+
+His Titanic hurling of blocks against critics did no harm to an enemy
+skilled in the use of trimmer weapons, notably the fine one of letting
+big missiles rebound.  He wrote from India, with Indian heat--"curry and
+capsicums," it was remarked.  He dared to claim the countenance of the
+Commander-in-chief of the Army of India for an act disapproved by the
+India House.  Other letters might be on their way, curryer than the
+preceding, his friends feared; and might also be malevolently printed,
+similarly commissioning the reverberation of them to belabour his name
+before the public.  Admirers were still prepared to admire; but aldermen
+not at the feast, squire-archs not in the saddle or at the bottle, some
+few of the juvenile and female fervent, were becoming susceptible to a
+frosty critical tone in the public pronunciation of Lord Ormont's name
+since the printing of his letter and the letters it called forth.  None
+of them doubted that his case was good.  The doubt concerned the effect
+on it of his manner of pleading it.  And if he damaged his case, he
+compromised his admirers.  Why, the case of a man who has cleverly won a
+bold stroke for his country must be good, as long as he holds his tongue.
+A grateful country will right him in the end: he has only to wait, and
+not so very long.  "This I did: now examine it."  Nothing more needed to
+be said by him, if that.
+
+True, he has a temper.  It is owned that he is a hero.  We take him with
+his qualities, impetuosity being one, and not unsuited to his arm of the
+service, as be has shown.  If his temper is high, it is an element of a
+character proved heroical.  So has the sun his blotches, and we believe
+that they go to nourish the luminary, rather than that they are a disease
+of the photosphere.
+
+Lord Ormont's apologists had to contend with anecdotes and dicta now
+pouring in from offended Britons, for illustration of an impetuosity
+fit to make another Charley XII. of Sweden--a gratuitous Coriolanus
+haughtiness as well, new among a people accustomed socially to bow the
+head to their nobles, and not, of late, expecting a kick for their pains.
+Newspapers wrote of him that, "a martinet to subordinates, he was known
+for the most unruly of lieutenants."  They alluded to current sayings,
+as that he "habitually took counsel of his horse on the field when a
+movement was entrusted to his discretion."  Numerous were the
+journalistic sentences running under an air of eulogy of the lordly
+warrior purposely to be tripped, and producing their damnable effect,
+despite the obvious artifice.  The writer of the letter from Bombay,
+signed Ormont, was a born subject for the antithetical craftsmen's
+tricky springes.
+
+He was, additionally, of infamous repute for morale in burgess
+estimation, from his having a keen appreciation of female beauty and
+a prickly sense of masculine honour.  The stir to his name roused
+pestilential domestic stories.  In those days the  aristocrat still
+claimed licence, and eminent soldier-nobles, comporting themselves as
+imitative servants of their god Mars, on the fields of love and war,
+stood necessarily prepared to vindicate their conduct as the field of the
+measured paces, without deeming themselves bounden to defend the course
+they took.  Our burgess, who bowed head to his aristocrat, and hired the
+soldier to fight for him, could not see that such mis-behaviour
+necessarily ensued.  Lord Ormont had fought duels at home and abroad.
+His readiness to fight again, and against odds, and with a totally unused
+weapon, was exhibited by his attack on the Press in the columns of the
+Press.  It wore the comical face to the friends deploring it, which
+belongs to things we do that are so very like us.  They agreed with his
+devoted sister, Lady Charlotte Eglett, as to the prudence of keeping him
+out of England for a time, if possible.
+
+At the first perusal of the letter, Lady Charlotte quitted her place in
+Leicestershire, husband, horses, guests, the hunt, to scour across a
+vacant London and pick up acquaintances under stress to be spots there in
+the hunting season, with them to gossip for counsel on the subject of
+"Ormont's hand-grenade," and how to stop and extinguish a second.  She
+was a person given to plain speech.  "Stinkpot" she called it, when
+acknowledging foul elements in the composition and the harm it did to
+the unskilful balist.  Her view of the burgess English imaged a mighty
+monster behind bars, to whom we offer anything but our hand.  As soon as
+he gets held of that he has you; he won't let it loose with flesh on the
+bones.  We must offend him--we can't be man or woman without offending
+his tastes and his worships; but while we keep from contact (i.e.
+intercommunication) he may growl, he is harmless.  Witness the many
+occasions when her brother offended worse, and had been unworried, only
+growled at, and distantly, not in a way to rouse concern; and at the neat
+review, or procession into the City, or public display of any sort,
+Ormont had but to show himself, he was the popular favourite immediately.
+He had not committed the folly of writing a letter to a newspaper then.
+
+Lady Charlotte paid an early visit to the office of the great London
+solicitor, Arthur Abner, who wielded the law as an instrument of
+protection for countless illustrious people afflicted by what they stir
+or attract in a wealthy metropolis.  She went simply to gossip of her
+brother's affairs with a refreshing man of the world, not given to
+circumlocutions, and not afraid of her: she had no deeper object;
+but fancying she heard the clerk, on his jump from the stool, inform her
+that Mr. Abner was out, "Out?" she cried, and rattled the room, thumping,
+under knitted brows.  "Out of town?"  For a man of business taking
+holidays, when a lady craves for gossip, disappointed her faith in him as
+cruelly as the shut-up, empty inn the broken hunter knocking at a hollow
+door miles off home.
+
+Mr. Abner, hatted and gloved and smiling, came forth.  "Going out, the
+man meant, Lady Charlotte.  At your service for five minutes."
+
+She complimented his acuteness, in the remark, "You see I've only come to
+chat," and entered his room.
+
+He led her to her theme: "The excitement is pretty well over."
+
+"My brother's my chief care--always was.  I'm afraid he'll be
+pitchforking at it again, and we shall have another blast.  That letter
+ought never to have been printed.  That editor deserves the horsewhip for
+letting it appear.  If he prints a second one I shall treat him as a
+personal enemy."
+
+"Better make a friend of him."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Meet him at my table."
+
+She jumped an illumined half-about on her chair.  "So I will, then.  What
+are the creature's tastes?"
+
+"Hunts, does he?"  The editor rose in her mind from the state of neuter
+to something of a man.  "I recollect an article in that paper on the
+Ormont duel.  I hate duelling, but I side with my brother.  I had to
+laugh, though.  Luckily, there's no woman on hand at present, as far as
+I know.  Ormont's not likely to be hooked by garrison women or blacks.
+Those coloured women--some of ours too--send the nose to the clouds;
+not a bad sign for health.  And there are men like that old Cardinal
+Guicciardini tells of...hum!  Ormont's not one of them.  I hope he'll
+stay in India till this blows over, or I shall be hearing of
+provocations."
+
+"You have seen the Duke?"
+
+She nodded.  Her reserve was a summary of the interview.  "Kind, as he
+always is," she said.  "Ormont has no chance of employment unless there's
+a European war.  They can't overlook him in case of war.  He'll have to
+pray for that."
+
+"Let us hope we shan't get it."
+
+"My wish; but I have to think of my brother.  If he's in England with no
+employment, he's in a mess with women and men both.  He kicks if he's
+laid aside to rust.  He has a big heart.  That's what I said: all he
+wants is to serve his country.  If you won't have war, give him Gibraltar
+or Malta, or command of one of our military districts.  The South-eastern
+'ll be vacant soon.  He'd like to be Constable of the Castle, and have an
+eye on France."
+
+"I think he's fond of the French?"
+
+"Loves the French.  Expects to have to fight them all the same.  He loves
+his country best.  Here's the man everybody's abusing!"
+
+"I demur, my lady.  I was dining the other day with a client of mine, and
+a youngster was present who spoke of Lord Ormont in a way I should like
+you to have heard.  He seemed to know the whole of Lord Ormont's career,
+from the time of the ride to Paraguay up to the capture of the plotting
+Rajah.  He carried the table."
+
+"Good boy!  We must turn to the boys for justice, then.  Name your day
+for this man, this editor."
+
+"I will see him.  You shall have the day to-night."
+
+Lady Charlotte and the editor met.  She was racy, he anecdotal.  Stag,
+fox, and hare ran before them, over fields and through drawing-rooms: the
+scent was rich.  They found that they could talk to one another as they
+thought; that he was not the Isle-bound burgess, nor she the postured
+English great lady; and they exchanged salt, without which your current
+scandal is of exhausted savour.  They enjoyed the peculiar novel relish
+of it, coming from a social pressman and a dame of high society.  The
+different hemispheres became known as one sphere to these birds of broad
+wing convening in the upper blue above a quartered carcase earth.
+
+A week later a letter, the envelope of a bulky letter in Lord Ormont's
+handwriting, reached Lady Charlotte.  There was a line from the editor:
+
+     "Would it please your ladyship to have this printed?"
+
+She read the letter, and replied:
+
+     "Come to me for six days; you shall have the best mount in the
+     county."
+
+An editor devoid of malice might probably have forborne to print a letter
+that appealed to Lady Charlotte, or touched her sensations, as if a
+glimpse of the moon, on the homeward ride in winter on a nodding horse,
+had suddenly bared to view a precipitous quarry within two steps.  There
+is no knowing: few men can forbear to tell a spicy story of their
+friends; and an editor, to whom an exhibition of the immensely
+preposterous on the part of one writing arrogantly must be provocative,
+would feel the interests of his Journal, not to speak of the claims of
+readers, pluck at him when he meditated the consignment of such a
+precious composition to extinction.  Lady Charlotte withheld a sight of
+the letter from Mr. Eglett.  She laid it in her desk, understanding well
+that it was a laugh lost to the world.  Poets could reasonably feign it
+to shake the desk inclosing it.  She had a strong sense of humour; her
+mind reverted to the desk in a way to make her lips shut grimly.  She
+sided with her brother.
+
+Only pen in hand did he lay himself open to the enemy.  In his personal
+intercourse he was the last of men to be taken at a disadvantage.  Lady
+Charlotte was brought round to the distasteful idea of some help coming
+from a legitimate adjunct at his elbow: a restraining woman--wife, it had
+to be said.  And to name the word wife for Thomas Rowsley, Earl of
+Ormont, put up the porcupine quills she bristled with at the survey of a
+sex thirsting, and likely to continue thirsting, for such honour.  What
+woman had she known fit to bear the name?  She had assumed the judicial
+seat upon the pretensions of several, and dismissed them to their limbo,
+after testifying against them.  Who is to know the fit one in these mines
+of deception?  Women of the class offering wives decline to be taken on
+trial; they are boxes of puzzles--often dire surprises.  Her brother knew
+them well enough to shy at the box.  Her brother Rowsley had a funny
+pride, like a boy at a game, at the never having been caught by one among
+the many he made captive.  She let him have it all to himself.
+
+He boasted it to a sister sharing the pride exultant in the cry of the
+hawk, scornful of ambitions poultry, a passed finger-post to the plucked,
+and really regretful that no woman had been created fit for him.  When
+she was not aiding with her brother, women, however contemptible for
+their weakness, appeared to her as better than barn-door fowl, or vermin
+in their multitudes gnawing to get at the cheese-trap.  She could be
+humane, even sisterly, with women whose conduct or prattle did not
+outrage plain sense, just as the stickler for the privileges of her class
+was large-heartedly charitable to the classes flowing in oily orderliness
+round about below it--if they did so flow.  Unable to read woman's
+character, except upon the broadest lines as it were the spider's main
+threads of its web, she read men minutely, from the fact that they were
+neither mysteries nor terrors to her; but creatures of importunate
+appetites, humorous objects; very manageable, if we leave the road to
+their muscles, dress their wounds, smoothe their creases, plume their
+vanity; and she had an unerring eye for the man to be used when a blow
+was needed, methods for setting him in action likewise.  She knew how
+much stronger than ordinary men the woman who can put them in motion.
+They can be set to serve as pieces of cannon, under compliments on their
+superior powers, which were not all undervalued by her on their own
+merits, for she worshipped strength.  But the said, with a certain amount
+of truth, that the women unaware of the advantage Society gave them (as
+to mastering men) were fools.
+
+Tender, is not a word coming near to Lady Charlotte.  Thoughtful on
+behalf of the poor foolish victims of men she was.  She had saved some,
+avenged others.  It should be stated, that her notion of saving was the
+saving of them from the public: she had thrown up a screen.  The saving
+of them from themselves was another matter--hopeless, to her thinking.
+How preach at a creature on the bend of passion's rapids!  One might as
+well read a chapter from the Bible to delirious patients.  When once a
+woman is taken with the love-passion, we must treat her as bitten; hide
+her antics from the public: that is the principal business.  If she
+recovers, she resumes her place, and horrid old Nature, who drove her to
+the frenzy, is unlikely to bother or, at least, overthrow her again,
+unless she is one of the detestable wantons, past compassion or
+consideration.  In the case reviewed, the woman has gone through fire,
+and is none the worse for her experiences: worth ten times what she was,
+to an honest man, if men could be got to see it.  Some do.  Of those men
+who do not, Lady Charlotte spoke with the old family-nurse humour, which
+is familiar with the tricks and frailties of the infants; and it is a
+knife to probe the male, while seemingly it does the part of the napkin--
+pities and pats.  They expect a return of much for the little that is
+next to nothing.  They are fall of expectations: and of what else?
+They are hard bargainers.
+
+She thought this of men; and she liked men by choice.  She had old
+nurse's preference for the lustier male child.  The others are puling
+things, easier to rear, because they bend better; and less esteemed,
+though they give less trouble, rouse less care.  But when it came to the
+duel between the man and the woman, her sense of justice was moved to
+join her with the party of her unfairly handled sisters--a strong party,
+if it were not so cowardly, she had to think.
+
+Mr. Eglett, her husband, accepted her--accepted the position into which
+he naturally fell beside her, and the ideas she imposed on him; for she
+never went counter to his principles.  These were the fixed principles of
+a very wealthy man, who abhorred debt, and was punctilious in veracity,
+scrupulous in cleanliness of mind and body, devoted to the honour of his
+country, the interests of his class.  She respected the high landmark
+possessing such principles; and she was therefore enabled to lead without
+the wish to rule.  As it had been between them at the beginning, so it
+was now, when they were grandparents running on three lines of progeny
+from two daughters and a son: they were excellent friends.  Few couples
+can say more.  The union was good English grey--that of a prolonged
+November, to which we are reconciled by occasions for the hunt and the
+gun.  She was, nevertheless, an impassioned woman.  The feeling for her
+brother helped to satisfy her heart's fires, though as little with her
+brother as with her husband was she demonstrative.  Lord Ormont
+disrelished the caresses of relatives.
+
+She, for her part, had so strong a sympathy on behalf of poor gentlemen
+reduced to submit to any but a young woman's hug, that when, bronzed from
+India, he quitted the carriage and mounted her steps at Olmer, the desire
+to fling herself on his neck and breast took form in the words: "Here you
+are home again, Rowsley; glad to have you."  They shook hands firmly.
+
+He remained three days at Olmer.  His temper was mild, his frame of mind
+bad as could be.  Angry evaporations had left a residuum of solid scorn
+for these "English," who rewarded soldierly services as though it were a
+question of damaged packages of calico.  He threatened to take the first
+offer of a foreign State "not in insurrection."  But clear sky was
+overhead.  He was the Rowsley of the old boyish delight in field sports,
+reminiscences of prowlings and trappings in the woods, gropings along
+water-banks, enjoyment of racy gossip.  He spoke wrathfully of "one of
+their newspapers" which steadily persisted in withholding from
+publication every letter he wrote to it, after printing the first.
+And if it printed one, why not the others?
+
+Lady Charlotte put it on the quaintness of editors.
+
+He had found in London, perhaps, reason for saying that he should do
+well to be "out of this country" as early as he could; adding, presently,
+that he meant to go, though "it broke his heart to keep away from a six
+months' rest at Steignton," his Wiltshire estate.
+
+No woman was in the field.  Lady Charlotte could have submitted to the
+intrusion of one of those at times wholesome victims, for the sake of the
+mollification the unhappy proud thing might bring to a hero smarting
+under injustice at the hands of chiefs and authorities.
+
+He passed on to Steignton, returned to London, and left England for
+Spain, as he wrote word, saying he hoped to settle at Steignton neat
+year.  He was absent the next year, and longer.  Lady Charlotte had the
+surprising news that Steignton was let, shooting and all, for five years;
+and he had no appointment out of England or at home.  When he came to
+Olmer again he was under one of his fits of reserve, best undisturbed.
+Her sympathy with a great soldier snubbed, an active man rusting, kept
+her from remonstrance.
+
+Three years later she was made meditative by the discovery of a woman's
+being absolutely in the field, mistress of the field; and having been
+there for a considerable period, dating from about the time when he
+turned his back on England to visit a comrade-in-arms condemned by the
+doctors to pass the winter in Malaga; and it was a young woman, a girl
+in her teens, a handsome girl.  Handsome was to be expected; Ormont
+bargained for beauty.  But report said the girl was very handsome, and
+showed breeding: she seemed a foreigner, walked like a Goddess, sat her
+horse the perfect Amazon.  Rumour called her a Spaniard.
+
+"Not if she rides!"  Lady Charlotte cut that short.
+
+Rumour had subsequently more to say.  The reporter in her ear did not
+confirm it, and she was resolutely deaf to a story incredible of her
+brother--the man, of all men living, proudest of his name, blood,
+station.  So proud was he by nature, too, that he disdained to complain
+of rank injustice; he maintained a cheerful front against adversity and
+obloquy.  And this man of complete self-command, who has every form of
+noble pride, gets cajoled like a twenty-year-old yahoo at college!  Do
+you imagine it?  To suppose of a man cherishing the name of Ormont, that
+he would bestow it legally on a woman, a stranger, and imperil his race
+by mixing blood with a creature of unknown lineage, was--why, of course,
+it was to suppose him struck mad, and there never had been madness among
+the Ormonts: they were too careful of the purity of the strain.  Lady
+Charlotte talked.  She was excited, and ran her sentences to blanks, a
+cunning way for ministering consolation to her hearing, where the
+sentence intended a question, and the blank ending caught up the query
+tone and carried it dwindling away to the most distant of throttled
+interrogatives.  She had, in this manner, only to ask,--her hearing
+received the comforting answer it desired; for she could take that thin
+far sound as a travelling laughter of incredulity, triumphant derision.
+
+This meant to her--though she scarcely knew it, though the most wilful of
+women declined to know it--a state of alarm.  She had said of her brother
+in past days that he would have his time of danger after striking sixty.
+The dangerous person was to be young.
+
+But, then, Ormont had high principles with regard to the dues to his
+family.  His principles could always be trusted.  The dangerous young
+person would have to be a person of lineage, of a certain station at
+least: no need for a titled woman, only for warranted good blood.  Is
+that to be found certificated out of the rolls of Society?  It may just
+possibly be found, without certificate, however, in those muddled caverns
+where the excluded intermingle.  Here and there, in a peasant family,
+or a small country tradesman's just raised above a peasant, honest
+regenerating blood will be found.  Nobles wanting refreshment from the
+soil might do worse than try a slip of one of those juicy weeds; ill-
+fated, sickly Royalties would be set-up striding through another half-
+century with such invigoration, if it could be done for them!  There are
+tales.  The tales are honourably discredited by the crazy constitutions
+of the heirs to the diadem.
+
+Yes, but we are speculating on the matter seriously, as though it were
+one of intimate concern to the family.  What is there to make us think
+that Ormont would marry?  Impossible to imagine him intimidated.
+Unlikely that he, a practised reader of women, having so little of the
+woman in him, would be melted by a wily girl; as women in the twilight
+situation have often played the trick to come into the bright beams.
+How?  They do a desperate thing, and call it generosity, and then they
+appeal from it to my lord's generosity; and so the two generosities drive
+off in a close carriage with a friend and a professional landlady for the
+blessing of the parson, and are legitimately united.  Women have won
+round fools to give way in that way.  And quite right too!  thought Lady
+Charlotte, siding with nature and justice, as she reflected that no woman
+created would win round her brother to give way in that way.  He was too
+acute.  The moment the woman showed sign of becoming an actress, her doom
+was written.  "Poor idiot!" was not uncharitably inscribed by the
+sisterly lady on the tombstone of hopes aimed with scarce pardonable
+ambition at her brother.
+
+She blew away the rumour.  Ormont, she vowed, had not entitled any woman
+to share and bear his title.  And this was her interpretation of the
+report: he permitted (if he did permit) the woman to take his name,
+that he might have a scornful fling at the world maltreating him.
+Besides, the name was not published, it was not to be seen in the papers;
+it passed merely among male friends, tradesmen, servants: no great harm
+in that.
+
+Listen further.  Here is an unknown girl: why should he marry her?
+A girl consenting to the place beside a man of his handsome ripe age,
+is either bought, or she is madly enamoured; she does not dictate terms.
+Ormont is not of the brute buyers in that market.  One sees it is the
+girl who leads the dance.  A girl is rarely so madly enamoured as when
+she falls in love with her grandfather; she pitches herself at his head.
+This had not happened for the first time in Ormont's case; and he had
+never proposed marriage.  Why should he do it now?
+
+But again, if the girl has breeding to some extent, he might think it her
+due that she should pass under the safeguard of his name, out of sight.
+
+Then, so far the report is trustworthy.  We blow the rumour out of
+belief.  A young woman there is: she is not a wife.  Lady Charlotte
+allowed her the fairly respectable post of Hecate of the Shades, as long
+as the girl was no pretender to the place and name in the upper sphere.
+Her deductions were plausible, convincing to friends shaken by her
+vehement manner of coming at them.  She convinced herself by means of her
+multitude of reasons for not pursuing inquiry.  Her brother said nothing.
+There was no need for him to speak.  He seemed on one or two occasions in
+the act of getting himself together for the communication of a secret;
+and she made ready to listen hard, with ears, eyebrows, shut month, and a
+gleam at the back of her eyes, for a signification of something she would
+refer him to after he had spoken.  He looked at her and held his peace,
+or virtually held it,--that is, he said not one word on the subject she
+was to have told him she had anticipated.  Lady Charlotte ascribed it to
+his recollection of the quick blusher, the pained blusher, she was in her
+girlhood at mention or print of the story of men and women.  Who, not
+having known her, could conceive it!  But who could conceive that, behind
+the positive, plain-dealing, downright woman of the world, there was at
+times, when a nerve was touched or an old blocked path of imagination
+thrown open, a sensitive youthfulness; still quick to blush as far as the
+skin of a grandmother matron might show it!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE TUTOR
+
+There was no counting now on Lord Ormont's presence in the British
+gathering seasons, when wheatears wing across our fields or swallows
+return to their eaves.  He forsook the hunt to roam the Continent, one of
+the vulgar band of tourists, honouring town only when Mayflies had flown,
+and London's indiscriminate people went about without their volatile
+heads.
+
+Lady Charlotte put these changed conditions upon the behaviour of the
+military authorities to her brother, saying that the wonder was he did
+not shake the dust of his country from his feet.  In her wise head she
+rejoiced to think he was not the donkey she sketched for admiration; and
+she was partly consoled, or played at the taking of a comfort needed in
+her perpetual struggle with a phantom of a fact, by the reflection that a
+young woman on his arm would tense him to feel himself more at home
+abroad.  Her mind's habit of living warmly beside him in separation was
+vexed by the fixed intrusion of a female third person, who checked the
+run of intimate chatter, especially damped the fancied talk over early
+days--of which the creature was ignorant; and her propinquity to him
+arrested or broke the dialogue Lady Charlotte invented and pressed to
+renew.  But a wife, while letting him be seen, would have insisted on
+appropriating the thought of him--all his days, past as well as present.
+An impassioned sister's jealousy preferred that it should not be a wife
+reigning to dispute her share of her brother in imagination.
+
+Then came a rumour, telling of him as engaged upon the composition of his
+Memoirs.
+
+Lady Charlotte's impulsive outcry: "Writing them?" signified her grounds
+for alarm.
+
+Happily, Memoirs are not among the silly deeds done in a moment; they
+were somewhere ahead and over the hills: a band of brigands rather than a
+homely shining mansion, it was true; but distant; and a principal
+question shrieked to know whether he was composing them for publication.
+She could look forward with a girl's pleasure to the perusal of them in
+manuscript, in a woody nook, in a fervour of partizanship, easily
+avoiding sight of errors, grammatical or moral.  She chafed at the
+possible printing and publishing of them.  That would be equivalent to an
+exhibition of him clean-stripped for a run across London--brilliant in
+himself, spotty in the offence.  Published Memoirs indicate the end of a
+man's activity, and that he acknowledges the end; and at a period of Lord
+Ormont's life when the denial of it should thunder.  They are his final
+chapter, making mummy of the grand figure they wrap in the printed stuff.
+They are virtually his apology.  Can those knowing Lord Ormont hear him
+apologize?  But it is a craven apology if we stoop to expound: we are
+seen as pleading our case before the public.  Call it by any name you
+please, and under any attitude, it is that.  And set aside the writing:
+it may be perfect; the act is the degradation.  It is a rousing of
+swarms.  His friends and the public will see the proudest nobleman of his
+day, pleading his case in mangled English, in the headlong of an out-
+poured, undrilled, rabble vocabulary, doubling the ridicule by his
+imperturbability over the ridicule he excites: he who is no more
+ridiculous, cried the partizan sister, conjuring up the scene, not an ace
+more ridiculous, than a judge of assize calling himself miserable sinner
+on Sunday before the parson, after he has very properly condemned half a
+score of weekday miserable sinners to penal servitude or the rope.
+Nobody laughs at the judge.  Everybody will be laughing at the scornful
+man down half-way to his knee-cape with a stutter of an apology for
+having done his duty to his country, after stigmatizing numbers for
+inability or ill-will to do it.  But Ormont's weapon is the sword, not a
+pen!  Lady Charlotte hunted her simile till the dogs had it or it ran to
+earth.
+
+She struck at the conclusion, that the young woman had been persuading
+him.  An adoring young woman is the person to imagine and induce to the
+commission of such folly.  "What do you think?  You have seen her, you
+say?" she asked of a man she welcomed for his flavour of the worldling's
+fine bile.
+
+Lord Adderwood made answer: "She may be having a hand in it.  She
+worships, and that is your way of pulling gods to the ground."
+
+"Does she understand good English?"
+
+"Speaks it."
+
+"Can she write?"
+
+"I have never had a letter from her."
+
+"You tell me Morsfield admires the woman--would marry her to-morrow,
+if he could get her."
+
+"He would go through the ceremony Ormont has performed, I do not doubt."
+
+"I don't doubt all of you are ready.  She doesn't encourage one?"
+
+"On the contrary, all."
+
+"She's clever.  This has been going on for now seven years, and, as far
+as I know, she has my brother fast."
+
+"She may have done the clever trick of having him fast from the
+beginning."
+
+"She'd like people to think it."
+
+"She has an aunt to advertise it."
+
+"Ormont can't swallow the woman, I'm told."
+
+"Trying, if one is bound to get her down!"
+
+"Boasts of the connection everywhere she's admitted, Randeller says."
+
+"Randeller procures the admission to various parti-coloured places."
+
+"She must be a blinking moll-owl!  And I ask any sane Christian or Pagan-
+-proof enough!--would my brother Rowsley let his wife visit those places,
+those people?  Monstrous to have the suspicion that he would, you know
+him!  Mrs. Lawrence Finchley, for example.  I say nothing to hurt the
+poor woman; I back her against her imbecile of a husband.  He brings a
+charge he can't support; she punishes him by taking three years' lease of
+independence and kicks up the grass all over the paddock, and then comes
+cuckoo, barking his name abroad to have her home again.  You can win the
+shyest filly to corn at last.  She goes, and he digests ruefully the
+hotch-potch of a dish the woman brings him.  Only the world spies a side-
+head at her, husbanded or not, though the main fault was his, and she had
+a right to insist that he should be sure of his charge before he smacked
+her in the face with it before the world.  In dealing with a woman, a man
+commonly prudent--put aside chivalry, justice, and the rest--should bind
+himself to disbelieve what he can't prove.  Otherwise, let him expect his
+whipping, with or without ornament.  My opinion is, Lawrence Finchley had
+no solid foundation for his charge, except his being an imbecile.  She
+wasn't one of the adventurous women to jump the bars,--the gate had to be
+pushed open, and he did it.  There she is; and I ask you, would my
+brother Rowsley let his wife be intimate with her?  And there are others.
+And, sauf votre respect, the men--Morsfield for one, Randeller another!"
+
+"They have a wholesome dread of the lion."
+
+"If they smell a chance with the lion's bone--it's the sweeter for being
+the lion's.  These metaphors carry us off our ground.  I must let these
+Ormont Memoirs run and upset him, if they get to print.  I've only to
+oppose, printed they'll be.  The same if I say a word of this woman, he
+marries her to-morrow morning.  You speak of my driving men.  Why can't I
+drive Ormont?  Because I'm too fond of him.  There you have the secret of
+the subjection of women: they can hold their own, and a bit more, when
+they've no enemy beating inside."
+
+"Hearts!--ah, well, it's possible.  I don't say no; I've not discovered
+them," Lord Adderwood observed.
+
+They are rarely discovered in the haunts he frequented.
+
+Her allusion to Mrs. Lawrence Finchley rapped him smartly, and she
+admired his impassiveness under the stroke.  Such a spectacle was one of
+her pleasures.
+
+Lady Charlotte mentioned incidentally her want of a tutor for her
+grandson Leo during the winter holidays.  He suggested an application to
+the clergyman of her parish.  She was at feud with the Rev. Stephen
+Hampton-Evey, and would not take, she said, a man to be a bootblack in
+her backyard or a woman a scullery-wench in her kitchen upon his
+recommendation.  She described the person of Mr. Hampton-Evey, his manner
+of speech, general opinions, professional doctrines; rolled him into a
+ball and bowled him, with a shrug for lamentation, over the decay of the
+good old order of manly English Protestant clergymen, who drank their
+port, bothered nobody about belief, abstained from preaching their
+sermon, if requested; were capital fellows in the hunting-field, too; for
+if they came, they had the spur to hunt in the devil's despite.  Now we
+are going to have a kind of bitter, clawed, forked female, in vestments
+over breeches.  "How do you like that bundling of the sexes?"
+
+Lord Adderwood liked the lines of division to be strictly and invitingly
+definite.  He was thinking, as he reviewed the frittered appearance of
+the Rev. Stephen Hampton-Evey in Lady Charlotte's hinds, of the
+possibility that Lord Ormont, who was reputed to fear nobody, feared her.
+In which case, the handsome young woman passing among his associates as
+the pseudo Lady Ormont might be the real one after all, and Isabella
+Lawrence Finchley prove right in the warning she gave to dogs of chase.
+
+The tutor required by Lady Charlotte was found for her by Mr. Abner.
+Their correspondence on the subject filled the space of a week, and then
+the gentleman hired to drive a creaky wheel came down from London to
+Olmer, arriving late in the evening.
+
+Lady Charlotte's blunt "Oh!" when he entered her room and bowed upon the
+announcement of his name, was caused by an instantaneous perception and
+refection that it would be prudent to keep her grand-daughter Philippa,
+aged between seventeen and eighteen, out of his way.
+
+"You are friend of Mr. Abner's, are you?"
+
+He was not disconcerted.  He replied, in an assured and pleasant voice,
+"I have hardly the pretension to be called a friend, madam."
+
+"Are you a Jew?"
+
+Her abruptness knocked something like a laugh almost out of him, but he
+restrained the signs of it.
+
+"I am not."
+
+"You wouldn't be ashamed to tell me you were one if you were?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"You like the Jews?"
+
+"Those I know I like."
+
+"Not many Christians have the good sense and the good heart of Arthur
+Abner.  Now go and eat.  Come back to me when you've done.  I hope you
+are hungry.  Ask the butler for the wine you prefer."
+
+She had not anticipated the enrolment in her household of a man so young
+and good-looking.  These were qualifications for Cupid's business, which
+his unstrained self-possession accentuated to a note of danger to her
+chicks, because she liked the taste of him.  Her grand-daughter Philippa
+was in the girl's waxen age; another, Beatrice, was coming to it.  Both
+were under her care; and she was a vigilant woman, with an intuition and
+a knowledge of sex. She did not blame Arthur Abner for sending her a
+good-looking young man; she had only a general idea that tutors in a
+house, and even visiting tutors, should smell of dust and wear a snuffy
+appearance.  The conditions will not always insure the tutors from
+foolishness, as her girl's experience reminded her, but they protect the
+girl.
+
+"Your name is Weyburn; your father was an officer in the army, killed on
+the battle-field, Arthur Abner tells me," was her somewhat severely-toned
+greeting to the young tutor on his presenting himself the second time.
+
+It had the sound of the preliminary of an indictment read in a Court of
+Law.
+
+"My father died of his wounds in hospital," he said.
+
+"Why did you not enter the service?"
+
+"Want of an income, my lady."
+
+"Bad look-out.  Army or Navy for gentlemen, if they stick to the school
+of honour.  The sedentary professions corrupt men: bad for the blood.
+Those monastery monks found that out.  They had to birch the devil out of
+them three times a day and half the night, howling like full-moon dogs
+all through their lives, till the flesh was off them.  That was their
+exercise, if they were for holiness.  My brother, Lord Ormont, has never
+been still in his youth or his manhood.  See him now.  He counts his
+years by scores; and be has about as many wrinkles as you when you're
+smiling.  His cheeks are as red as yours now you're blushing.  You ought
+to have left off that trick by this time.  It's well enough in a boy."
+
+Against her will she was drawn to the young man, and her consciousness of
+it plucked her back to caution with occasional jerks--quaint alternations
+of the familiar and the harshly formal, in the stranger's experience.
+
+"If I have your permission, Lady Charlotte," said he, "the reason why I
+mount red a little--if I do it--is, you mention Lord Ormont, and I have
+followed his career since I was the youngest of boys."
+
+"Good to begin with the worship of a hero.  He can't sham, can't deceive
+--not even a woman; and you're old enough to understand the temptation:
+they're so silly.  All the more, it's a point of honour with a man of
+honour to shield her from herself.  When it's a girl--"
+
+The young man's eyebrows bent.
+
+"Chapters of stories, if you want to hear them," she resumed; "and I can
+vouch some of them true.  Lord Ormont was never one of the wolves in a
+hood.  Whatever you hear of him; you may be sure he laid no trap.  He's
+just the opposite to the hypocrite; so hypocrites date him.  I've heard
+them called high-priests of decency.  Then we choose to be indecent and
+honest, if there's a God to worship.  Fear, they're in the habit of
+saying--we are to fear God.  A man here, a Rev. Hampton-Evey, you'll hear
+him harp on 'fear God.'  Hypocrites may: honest sinners have no fear.
+And see the cause: they don't deceive themselves--that is why.  Do you
+think we call love what we fear?  They love God, or they disbelieve.
+And if they believe in Him, they know they can't conceal anything from
+Him.  Honesty means piety: we can't be one without the other.  And here
+are people--parsons--who talk of dying as going into the presence of our
+Maker, as if He had been all the while outside the world He created.
+Those parsons, I told the Rev. Hampton-Evey here, make infidels--they
+make a puzzle of their God.  I'm for a rational Deity.  They preach up
+a supernatural eccentric.  I don't say all: I've heard good sermons,
+and met sound-headed clergymen--not like that gaping Hampton-Evey,
+when a woman tells him she thinks for herself.  We have him sitting on
+our pariah.  A free-thinker startles him as a kind of demon; but a female
+free-thinker is one of Satan's concubines.  He took it upon himself to
+reproach me--flung his glove at my feet, because I sent a cheque to a
+poor man punished for blasphemy.  The man had the right to his opinions,
+and he had the courage of his opinions.  I doubt whether the Rev.
+Hampton-Evey would go with a willing heart to prison for his.  All the
+better for him if he comes head-up out of a trial.  But now see: all
+these parsons and judges and mobcaps insist upon conformity.  A man with
+common manly courage comes before them, and he's cast in penalties.  Yet
+we know from history, in England, France, Germany, that the time of
+nonconformity brought out the manhood of the nation.  Now, I say, a
+nation, to be a nation, must have men--I mean brave men.  That's what
+those hosts of female men combine to try to stifle.  They won't succeed,
+but we shall want a war to teach the country the value of courage.  You
+catch what I am driving at?  They accuse my brother of immorality because
+he makes no pretence to be better than the men of his class."
+
+Weyburn's eyelids fluttered.  Her kite-like ascent into the general, with
+the sudden drop on her choice morsel, switched his humour at the moment
+when he was respectfully considering that her dartings and gyrations had
+motive as mach as the flight of the swallow for food.  They had meaning;
+and here was one of the great ladies of the land who thought for herself,
+and was thoughtful for the country.  If she came down like a bird winged,
+it was her love of her brother that did it.  His look at Lady Charlotte
+glistened.
+
+She raised her defences against the basilisk fascinating Philippa; and
+with a vow to keep them apart and deprive him of his chance, she relapsed
+upon the stiff frigidity which was not natural to her.  It lasted long
+enough to put him on his guard under the seductions of a noble dame's
+condescension to a familiar tone.  But, as he was too well bred to show
+the change in his mind for her change of manner, and as she was the
+sister of his boyhood's hero, and could be full of flavour, his eyes
+retained something of their sparkle.  They were ready to lighten again,
+in the way peculiar to him, when she, quite forgetting her defence of
+Philippa, disburdened herself of her antagonisms and enthusiasms, her
+hates and her loves all round the neighbourhood and over the world, won
+to confidential communication by this young man's face.  She confessed as
+much, had he been guided to perceive it.  She said, "Arthur Abner's a
+reader of men: I can trust his word about them."
+
+Presently, it is true, she added: "No man's to be relied upon where
+there's a woman."  She refused her implicit trust to saints--"if ever a
+man really was a saint before he was canonized!"
+
+Her penetrative instinct of sex kindled the scepticism.  Sex she saw at
+play everywhere, dogging the conduct of affairs, directing them at times;
+she saw it as the animation of nature, senselessly stigmatized,
+hypocritically concealed, active in our thoughts where not in our deeds;
+and the declining of the decorous to see it, or admit the sight, got them
+abhorred bad names from her, after a touch at the deadly poison coming of
+that blindness, or blindfoldedness, and a grimly melancholy shrug over
+the cruelties resulting--cruelties chiefly affecting women.
+
+"You're too young to have thought upon such matters," she said, for a
+finish to them.
+
+That was hardly true.
+
+"I have thought," said Weyburn, and his head fell to reckoning of the
+small sum of his thoughts upon them.
+
+He was pulled up instantly for close inspection by the judge.  "What is
+your age?"
+
+"I am in my twenty-sixth year."
+
+"You have been among men: have you studied women?"
+
+"Not largely, Lady Charlotte.  Opportunity has been wanting at French and
+German colleges."
+
+"It's only a large and a close and a pretty long study of them that can
+teach you anything; and you must get rid of the poetry about them, and be
+sure you haven't lost it altogether.  That's what is called the golden
+mean.  I'm not for the golden mean in every instance; it's a way of
+exhorting to brutal selfishness.  I grant it's the right way in those
+questions.  You'll learn in time."  Her scanning gaze at the young man's
+face drove him along an avenue of his very possible chances of learning.
+"Certain to.  But don't tell me that at your age you have thought about
+women.  You may say you have felt.  A young man's feelings about women
+are better reading for him six or a dozen chapters farther on.  Then he
+can sift and strain.  It won't be perfectly clear, but it will do."
+
+Mr. Eglett hereupon threw the door open, and ushered in Master Leo.
+
+Lady Charlotte noticed that the tutor shook the boy's hand offhandedly,
+with not a whit of the usual obtrusive geniality, and merely dropped him
+a word.  Soon after, he was talking to Mr. Eglett of games at home and
+games abroad.  Poor fun over there!  We head the world in field games, at
+all events.  He drew a picture of a foreigner of his acquaintance looking
+on at football.  On the other hand, French boys and German, having passed
+a year or two at an English school, get the liking for our games, and do
+a lot of good when they go home.  The things we learn from them are to
+dance, to sing, and to study:--they are more in earnest than we about
+study.  They teach us at fencing too.  The tutor praised fencing as an
+exercise and an accomplishment.  He had large reserves of eulogy for
+boxing.  He knew the qualities of the famous bruisers of the time, cited
+fisty names, whose owners were then to be seen all over an admiring land
+in prints; in the glorious defensive-offensive attitude, England's own--
+Touch me, if you dare! with bullish, or bull-dog, or oak-bole fronts for
+the blow, handsome to pugilistic eyes.
+
+The young tutor had lighted on a pet theme of Mr. Eglett's--the excelling
+virtues of the practice of pugilism in Old England, and the school of
+honour that it is to our lower population.  "Fifty times better for them
+than cock-fighting," he exclaimed, admitting that he could be an
+interested spectator at a ring or the pit cock-fighting or ratting.
+
+"Ratting seems to have more excuse," the tutor said, and made no sign of
+a liking for either of those popular pastimes.  As he disapproved without
+squeamishness, the impulsive but sharply critical woman close by nodded;
+and she gave him his dues for being no courtier.
+
+Leo had to be off to bed.  The tutor spared him any struggle over
+the shaking of hands, and saying, "Goodnight, Leo," continued the
+conversation.  The boy went away, visibly relieved of the cramp that
+seizes on a youngster at the formalities pertaining to these chilly
+and fateful introductions.
+
+"What do you think of the look of him?" Mr. Eglett asked.
+
+The tutor had not appeared to inspect the boy.  "Big head," he remarked.
+"Yes, Leo won't want pushing at books when he's once in harness.  He will
+have six weeks of me.  It's more than the yeomanry get for drill per
+annum, and they're expected to know something of a soldier's duties.
+There's a chance of putting him on the right road in certain matters.
+We'll walk, or ride, or skate, if the frost holds to-morrow: no lessons
+the first day."
+
+"Do as you think fit," said lady Charlotte.
+
+The one defect she saw in the tutor did not concern his pupil.  And a
+girl, if hit, would be unable to see that this tutor, judged as a man,
+was to some extent despicable for accepting tutorships, and, one might
+say, dishonouring the family of a soldier of rank and distinction, by
+coming into houses at the back way, with footing enough to air his graces
+when once established there.  He ought to have knocked at every door in
+the kingdom for help, rather than accept tutorships, and disturb
+households (or providently-minded mistresses of them) with all sorts of
+probably groundless apprehensions, founded naturally enough on the good
+looks he intrudes.
+
+This tutor committed the offence next day of showing he had a firm and
+easy seat in the saddle, which increased Lady Charlotte's liking for him
+and irritated her watchful forecasts.  She rode with the young man after
+lunch, "to show him the country," and gave him a taste of what he took
+for her variable moods.  He misjudged her.  Like a swimmer going through
+warm and cold springs of certain lake waters, he thought her a capricious
+ladyship, dangerous for intimacy, alluring to the deeps and gripping with
+cramps.
+
+She pushed him to defend his choice of the tutor's profession.
+
+"Think you understand boys?" she caught up his words; "you can't.  You
+can humour them, as you humour women.  They're just as hard to read.  And
+don't tell me a young man can read women.  Boys and women go on their
+instincts.  Egyptologists can spell you hieroglyphs; they'd be stumped,
+as Leo would say, to read a spider out of an ink-pot over a sheet of
+paper."
+
+"One gets to interpret by degrees, by observing their habits," the tutor
+said, and vexed her with a towering complacency under provocation that
+went some way further to melt the woman she was, while her knowledge of
+the softness warned her still more of the duty of playing dragon round
+such a young man in her house.  The despot is alert at every issue, to
+every chance; and she was one, the wakefuller for being benevolent; her
+mind had no sleep by day.
+
+For a month she subjected Mr. Matthew Weyburn to the microscope of her
+observation and the probe of her instinct.  He proved that he could
+manage without cajoling a boy.  The practical fact established, by
+agreement between herself and the unobservant gentleman who was her
+husband, Lady Charlotte allowed her meditations to drop an indifferent
+glance at the speculative views upon education entertained by this young
+tutor.  To her mind they were flighty; but she liked him, and as her
+feelings dictated to her mind when she had not to think for others, she
+spoke of his views toleratingly, almost with an implied approval, after
+passing them through the form of burlesque to which she customarily
+treated things failing to waft her enthusiasm.  In regard to Philippa, he
+behaved well: he bestowed more of his attention on Beatrice, nearer Leo's
+age, in talk about games and story-books and battles; nothing that he did
+when the girls were present betrayed the strutting plumed cock, bent to
+attract, or the sickly reptile, thirsty for a prize above him and meaning
+to have it, like Satan in Eden.  Still, of course, he could not help his
+being a handsome fellow, having a vivid face and eyes transparent,
+whether blue or green, to flame of the brain exciting them; and that
+becomes a picture in the dream of girls--a picture creating the dream
+often.  And Philippa had asked her grandmother, very ingenuously indeed,
+with a most natural candour, why "they saw so little of Leo's hero."
+Simple female child!
+
+However, there was no harm done, and Lady Charlotte liked him.  She liked
+few.  Forthwith, in the manner of her particular head, a restless head,
+she fell to work at combinations.
+
+Thus:--he is a nice young fellow, well bred, no cringing courtier,
+accomplished, good at classics, fairish at mathematics, a scholar in
+French, German, Italian, with a shrewd knowledge of the different races,
+and with sound English sentiment too, and the capacity for writing good
+English, although in those views of his the ideas are unusual, therefore
+un-English, profoundly so.  But his intentions are patriotic; they would
+not displease Lord Ormont.  He has a worship of Lord Ormont.  All we can
+say on behalf of an untried inferior is in that,--only the valiant admire
+devotedly.  Well, he can write grammatical, readable English.  What if
+Lord Ormont were to take him as a secretary while the Memoirs are in
+hand?  He might help to chasten the sentences laughed at by those
+newspapers.  Or he might, being a terrible critic of writing, and funny
+about styles, put it in an absurd light, that would cause the Memoirs to
+be tossed into the fire.  He was made for the post of secretary!  The
+young man's good looks would be out of harm's way then.  If any sprig of
+womankind come across him there, it will, at any rate, not be a girl.
+Women must take care of themselves.  Only the fools among them run to
+mischief in the case of a handsome young fellow.
+
+Supposing a certain woman to be one of the fools?  Lady Charlotte merely
+suggested it in the dashing current of her meditations--did not strike it
+out interrogatively.  The woman would be a fine specimen among her class;
+that was all.  For the favourite of Lord Ormont to stoop from her place
+beside him--ay, but women do; heroes have had the woeful experience of
+that fact.  First we see them aiming themselves at their hero; next they
+are shooting an eye at the handsome man.  The thirst of nature comes
+after that of their fancy, in conventional women.  Sick of the hero
+tried, tired of their place in the market, no longer ashamed to
+acknowledge it, they begin to consult their own taste for beauty--they
+have it quite as much as the men have it; and when their worshipped
+figure of manliness, in a romantic sombrero, is a threadbare giant,
+showing bruises, they sink on their inherent desire for a dance with the
+handsome man.  And the really handsome man is the most extraordinary of
+the rarities.  No wonder that when he appears he slays them, walks over
+them like a pestilence!
+
+This young Weyburn would touch the fancy of a woman of a romantic turn.
+Supposing her enthusiastic in her worship of the hero, after a number of
+years--for anything may be imagined where a woman is concerned--why,
+another enthusiasm for the same object, and on the part of a stranger, a
+stranger with effective eyes, rapidly leads to sympathy.  Suppose the
+reverse--the enthusiasm gone to dust, or become a wheezy old bellows, as
+it does where there's disparity of age, or it frequently does--then the
+sympathy with a good-looking stranger comes more rapidly still.
+
+These were Lady Charlotte's glances right and left--idle flights of the
+eye of a mounted Amazon across hedges at the canter along the main road
+of her scheme; which was to do a service to the young man she liked and
+to the brother she loved, for the marked advantage of both equally;
+perhaps for the chance of a little gossip to follow about that tenacious
+woman by whom her brother was held hard and fast, kept away from friends
+and relatives, isolated, insomuch as to have given up living on his
+estate--the old home!--because he would not disgrace it or incur odium by
+taking her there.
+
+In consequence of Lord Ormont's resistance to pressure from her on two or
+three occasions, she chose to nurse and be governed by the maxim for
+herself: Never propose a plan to him, if you want it adopted.  That was
+her way of harmlessly solacing love's vindictiveness for an injury.
+
+She sent Arthur Abner a letter, thanking him for his recommendation of
+young Mr. Weyburn, stating her benevolent wishes as regarded the young
+man and "those hateful Memoirs," requesting that her name should not be
+mentioned in the affair, because she was anxious on all grounds to have
+the proposal accepted by her brother.  She could have vowed to herself
+that she wrote sincerely.
+
+"He must want a secretary.  He would be shy at an offer of one from me.
+Do you hint it, if you get a chance.  You gave us Mr. Weyburn, and Mr.
+Eglett and I like him.  Ormont would too, I am certain.  You have obliged
+him before; this will be better than anything you have done for us.  It
+will stop the Memoirs, or else give them a polish.  Your young friend has
+made me laugh over stuff taken for literature until we put on our
+spectacles.  Leo jogs along in harness now, and may do some work at
+school yet."
+
+Having posted her letter, she left the issue to chance, as we may when
+conscience is easy.  An answer came the day before Weyburn's departure.
+Arthur Abner had met Lord Ormont in the street, had spoken of the rumour
+of Memoirs promised to the world, hinted at the possible need for a
+secretary; "Lord Ormont would appoint a day to see Mr. Weyburn."
+
+Lady Charlotte considered that to be as good as the engagement.
+
+"So we keep you in the family," she said.  "And now look here: you ought
+to know my brother's ways, if you're going to serve him.  You'll have to
+guess at half of everything he tells you; he'll expect you to know the
+whole.  There's no man so secret.  Why?  He fears nothing; I can't tell
+why.  And what his mouth shuts on, he exposes as if in his hand.  Of
+course he's proud, and good reason.  You'll see when you mustn't offend.
+A lady's in the house--I hear of it.  She takes his name, they say.  She
+may be a respectable woman--I've heard no scandal.  We have to hear of a
+Lady Ormont out of Society!  We have to suppose it means there's not to
+be a real one.  He can't marry if he has allowed her to go about bearing
+his name.  She has a fool of an aunt, I'm told; as often in the house as
+not.  Good proof of his fondness for the woman, if he swallows half a
+year of the aunt!  Well, you won't, unless you've mere man's eyes, be
+able to help seeing him trying to hide what he suffers from that aunt.
+He bears it, like the man he is; but woe to another betraying it!  She
+has a tongue that goes like the reel of a rod, with a pike bolting out of
+the shallows to the snag he knows--to wind round it and defy you to pull.
+Often my brother Rowsley and I have fished the day long, and in hard
+weather, and brought home a basket; and he boasted of it more than of
+anything he has ever done since.  That woman holds him away from me now.
+I say no harm of her.  She may be right enough from her point of view; or
+it mayn't be owing to her.  I wouldn't blame a woman.  Well, but my point
+with you is, you swallow the woman's aunt--the lady's aunt--without
+betraying you suffer at all.  Lord Ormont has eyes of an eagle for a
+speck above the surface.  All the more because the aunt is a gabbling
+idiot does he--I say it seeing it--fire up to defend her from the sneer
+of the lip or half a sign of it!  No, you would be an your guard; I can
+trust you.  Of course you'd behave like the gentleman you are where any
+kind of woman's concerned; but you mustn't let a shadow be seen, think
+what you may.  The woman--lady--calling herself Lady Ormont,--poor woman,
+I should do the same in her place,--she has a hard game to play; I have
+to be for my family: she has manners, I'm told; holds herself properly.
+She fancies she brings him up to the altar, in the end, by decent
+behaviour.  That's a delusion.  It's creditable to her, only she can't
+understand the claims of the family upon a man like my brother.  When you
+have spare time--'kick-ups,' he need to call it, writing to me from
+school--come here; you're welcome, after three days' notice.  I shall be
+glad to see you again.  You've gone some way to make a man of Leo."
+
+He liked her well: he promised to come.  She was a sinewy bite of the
+gentle sex, but she had much flavour, and she gave nourishment.
+
+"Let me have three days' notice," she repeated.
+
+"Not less, Lady Charlotte," said he.
+
+Weyburn received intimation from Arthur Abner of the likely day Lord
+Ormont would appoint, and he left Olmer for London to hold himself in
+readiness.  Lady Charlotte and Leo drove him to meet the coach.
+Philippa, so strangely baffled in her natural curiosity, begged for a
+seat; she begged to be allowed to ride.  Petitions were rejected.  She
+stood at the window seeing "Grandmama's tutor," as she named him, carried
+off by grandmama.  Her nature was avenged on her tyrant grandmama: it
+brought up almost to her tongue thoughts which would have remained
+subterranean, under control of her habit of mind, or the nursery's
+modesty, if she had been less tyrannically treated.  They were
+subterranean thoughts, Nature's original, such as the sense of injustice
+will rouse in young women; and they are better unstirred, for they ripen
+girls over-rapidly when they are made to revolve near the surface.  It
+flashed on the girl why she had been treated tyrannically.
+
+"Grandmama has good taste in tutors," was all that she said while the
+thoughts rolled over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+RECOGNITION
+
+Our applicant for the post of secretary entered the street of Lord
+Ormont's London house, to present himself to his boyhood's hero by
+appointment.
+
+He was to see, perhaps to serve, the great soldier.  Things had come to
+this; and he thought it singular.  But for the previous introduction to
+Lady Charlotte, he would have thought it passing wonderful.  He ascribed
+it to the whirligig.
+
+The young man was not yet of an age to gather knowledge of himself and of
+life from his present experience of the fact, that passionate devotion to
+an object strikes a vein through circumstances, as a travelling run of
+flame darts the seeming haphazard zigzags to catch at the dry of dead
+wood amid the damp; and when passion has become quiescent in the admirer,
+there is often the unsubsided first impulsion carrying it on.  He will
+almost sorely embrace his idol with one or other of the senses.
+
+Weyburn still read the world as it came to him, by bite, marvelling at
+this and that, after the fashion of most of us.  He had not deserted his
+adolescent's hero, or fallen upon analysis of a past season.  But he was
+now a young man, stoutly and cognizantly on the climb, with a good aim
+overhead, axed green youth's enthusiasms a step below his heels: one of
+the lovers of life, beautiful to behold, when we spy into them; generally
+their aspect is an enlivenment, whatever may be the carving of their
+features.  For the sake of holy unity, this lover of life, whose gaze
+was to the front in hungry animation, held fast to his young dreams,
+perceiving a soul of meaning in them, though the fire might have gone
+out; and he confessed to a past pursuit of delusions.  Young men of this
+kind will have, for the like reason, a similar rational sentiment on
+behalf of our world's historic forward march, while admitting that
+history has to be taken from far backward if we would gain assurance
+of man's advance.  It nerves an admonished ambition.
+
+He was ushered into a London house's library, looking over a niggard
+enclosure of gravel and dull grass, against a wall where ivy dribbled.
+An armchair was beside the fireplace.  To right and left of it a floreate
+company of books in high cases paraded shoulder to shoulder, without a
+gap; grenadiers on the line.  Weyburn read the titles on their scarlet-
+and-blue facings.  They were approved English classics; honoured
+veterans, who have emerged from the conflict with contemporary opinion,
+stamped excellent, or have been pushed by the roar of contemporaneous
+applauses to wear the leather-and-gilt uniform of our Immortals, until a
+more qualmish posterity disgorges them.  The books had costly bindings.
+Lord Ormont's treatment of Literature appeared to resemble Lady
+Charlotte's, in being reverential and uninquiring.  The books she bought
+to read were Memoirs of her time by dead men and women once known to her.
+These did fatigue duty in cloth or undress.  It was high drill with all
+of Lord Ormont's books, and there was not a modern or a minor name among
+the regiments.  They smelt strongly of the bookseller's lump lots by
+order; but if a show soldiery, they were not a sham, like a certain row
+of venerably-titled backs, that Lady Charlotte, without scruple, left
+standing to blow an ecclesiastical trumpet of empty contents; any one
+might have his battle of brains with them, for the twining of an absent
+key.
+
+The door opened.  Weyburn bowed to his old star in human shape: a grey
+head on square shoulders, filling the doorway.  He had seen at Olmer Lady
+Charlotte's treasured miniature portrait of her brother; a perfect
+likeness, she said--complaining the  neat instant of injustice done to
+the fire of his look.
+
+Fire was low down behind the eyes at present.  They were quick to scan
+and take summary of their object, as the young man felt while observing
+for himself.  Height and build of body were such as might be expected in
+the brother of Lady Charlotte and from the tales of his prowess.  Weyburn
+had a glance back at Cuper's boys listening to the tales.
+
+The soldier-lord's manner was courteously military--that of an
+established superior indifferent to the deferential attitude he must
+needs enact.  His curt nick of the head, for a response to the visitor's
+formal salutation, signified the requisite acknowledgment, like a city
+creditor's busy stroke of the type-stamp receipt upon payment.
+
+The ceremony over, he pitched a bugle voice to fit the contracted area:
+"I hear from Mr. Abner that you have made acquaintance with Olmer.  Good
+hunting country there."
+
+"Lady Charlotte kindly gave me a mount, my lord."
+
+"I knew your father by name--Colonel Sidney Weyburn.  You lost him at
+Toulouse.  We were in the Peninsula; I was at Talavera with him.  Bad day
+for our cavalry."
+
+"Our officers were young at their work then."
+
+"They taught the Emperor's troops to respect a charge of English horse.
+It was teaching their fox to set traps for them."
+
+Lord Ormont indicated a chair.  He stood.
+
+"The French had good cavalry leaders," Weyburn said, for cover to a
+continued study of the face,
+
+"Montbrun, yes: Murat, Lassalle, Bessieres.  Under the Emperor they had."
+
+"You think them not at home in the saddle, my lord?"
+
+"Frenchmen have nerves; horses are nerves.  They pile excitement too
+high.  When cool, they're among the best.  None of them had head for
+command of all the arms."
+
+"One might say the same of Seidlitz and Ziethen?"
+
+"Of Ziethen.  Seidlitz had a wider grasp, I suppose."  He pursed his
+month, pondering.  "No; and in the Austrian service, too; generals of
+cavalry are left to whistle for an independent command.  There's a
+jealousy of our branch!"  The injured warrior frowned and hummed.
+He spoke his thought mildly: "Jealousy of the name of soldier in this
+country!  Out of the service, is the place to recommend.  I'd have
+advised a son of mine to train for a jockey rather than enter it.  We
+deal with that to-morrow, in my papers.  You come to me?  Mr. Abner has
+arranged the terms?  So I see you at ten in the morning.  I am glad to
+meet a young man--Englishman--who takes an interest in the service."
+
+Weyburn fancied the hearing of a step; he heard the whispering dress.  It
+passed him; a lady went to the armchair.   She took her seat, as she had
+moved, with sedateness, the exchange of a toneless word with my lord.
+She was a brune.  He saw that when he rose to do homage.
+
+Lord Ormont resumed: "Some are born to it, must be soldiers; and in peace
+they are snubbed by the heads; in war they are abused by the country.
+They don't understand in England how to treat an army; how to make one
+either!
+
+"The gentleman--Mr. Weyburn: Mr. Arthur Abner's recommendation," he added
+hurriedly, with a light wave of his hand and a murmur, that might be the
+lady's title; continuing: "A young man of military tastes should take
+service abroad.  They're in earnest about it over there.  Here they play
+at it; and an army's shipped to land without commissariat, ambulances,
+medical stores, and march against the odds, as usual--if it can march!
+
+"Albuera, my lord?"
+
+"Our men can spurt, for a flick o' the whip.  They're expected to be
+constantly ready for doing prodigies--to repair the country's omissions.
+All the country cares for is to hope Dick Turpin may get to York.  Our
+men are good beasts; they give the best in 'em, and drop.  More's the
+scandal to a country that has grand material and overtasks it.  A blazing
+disaster ends the chapter!"
+
+This was talk of an injured veteran.  It did not deepen the hue of his
+ruddied skin.  He spoke in the tone of matter of fact.  Weyburn had been
+prepared for something of the sort by his friend, Arthur Abner.  He noted
+the speaker's heightened likeness under excitement to Lady Charlotte.
+Excitement came at an early call of their voices to both; and both had
+handsome, open features, bluntly cut, nothing of aquiline or the
+supercilious; eyes bluish-grey, in arched recesses, horny between the
+thick lids, lively to shoot their meaning when the trap-mouth was active;
+effectively expressing promptitute for combat, pleasure in attack,
+wrestle, tag, whatever pertained to strife; an absolute sense of their
+right.
+
+As there was a third person present at this dissuasion of military
+topics, the silence of the lady drew Weyburn to consult her opinion in
+her look.
+
+It was on him.  Strange are the woman's eyes which can unoffendingly
+assume the privilege to dwell on such a living object as a man without
+become gateways for his return look, and can seem in pursuit of thoughts
+while they enfold.  They were large dark eyes, eyes of southern night.
+They sped no shot; they rolled forth an envelopment.  A child among toys,
+caught to think of other toys, may gaze in that way.  But these were a
+woman's eyes.
+
+He gave Lord Ormont his whole face, as an auditor should.  He was
+interested besides, as he told a ruffled conscience.  He fell upon the
+study of his old hero determinedly.
+
+The pain of a memory waking under pillows, unable to do more than strain
+for breath, distracted his attention.  There was a memory: that was all
+he knew.  Or else he would have lashed himself for hanging on the
+beautiful eyes of a woman.  To be seeing and hearing his old hero was
+wonder enough.
+
+Recollections of Lady Charlotte's plain hints regarding the lady present
+resolved to the gross retort, that her eyes were beautiful.  And be knew
+them--there lay the strangeness.  They were known beautiful eyes, in a
+foreign land of night and mist.
+
+Lord Ormont was discoursing with racy eloquence of our hold on India: his
+views in which respect were those of Cuper's boys.  Weyburn ventured a
+dot-running description of the famous ride, and out flew an English
+soldier's grievance.  But was not the  unjustly-treated great soldier
+well rewarded, whatever the snubs and the bitterness, with these large
+dark eyes in his house, for his own?  Eyes like these are the beginning
+of a young man's world; they nerve, inspire, arm him, colour his life; he
+would labour, fight, die for them.  It seemed to Weyburn a blessedness
+even to behold them.  So it had been with him at the early stage; and his
+heart went swifter, memory fetched a breath.  Memory quivered eyelids,
+when the thought returned--of his having known eyes as lustrous.  First
+lights of his world, they had more volume, warmth, mystery--were sweeter.
+Still, these in the room were sisters to them.  They quickened throbs;
+they seemed a throb of the heart made visible.
+
+That was their endowment of light and lustre simply, and the mystical
+curve of the lids.  For so they could look only because the heart was
+disengaged from them.  They were but heavenly orbs.
+
+The lady's elbow was on an arm of her chair, her forefinger at her left
+temple.  Her mind was away, one might guess; she could hardly be
+interested in talk of soldiering and of foreign army systems, jealous
+English authorities and officials, games, field-sports.  She had personal
+matters to think of.
+
+Adieu until to-morrow to the homes she inhabited!  The street was a
+banishment and a relief when Weyburn's first interview with Lord Ormont
+was over.
+
+He rejoiced to tell his previous anticipations that he had not been
+disappointed; and he bade hero-worshippers expect no gilded figure.  We
+gather heroes as we go, if we are among the growing: our constancy is
+shown in the not discarding of our old ones.  He held to his earlier
+hero, though he had seen him, and though he could fancy he saw round him.
+
+Another, too, had been a hero-lover.  How did that lady of night's eyes
+come to fall into her subjection?
+
+He put no question as to the name she bore; it hung in a black suspense--
+vividly at its blackest illuminated her possessor.  A man is a hero to
+some effect who wins a woman like this; and, if his glory bespells her,
+so that she flings all to the winds for him, burns the world; if, for
+solely the desperate rapture of belonging to him, she consents of her
+free will to be one of the nameless and discoloured, he shines in a way
+to make the marrow of men thrill with a burning envy.  For that must be
+the idolatrous devotion desired by them all.
+
+Weyburn struck down upon his man's nature--the bad in us, when beauty of
+woman is viewed; or say, the old original revolutionary, best kept
+untouched; for a touch or a meditative pause above him, fetches him up to
+roam the civilized world devouringly and lawlessly.  It is the special
+peril of the young lover of life, that an inflammability to beauty in
+women is in a breath intense with him.  He is, in truth, a thinly-sealed
+volcano of our imperishable ancient father; and has it in him to be the
+multitudinously-amorous of the mythologic Jove.  Give him head, he can be
+civilization's devil.  Is she fair and under a shade?--then is she doubly
+fair.  The shadow about her secretes mystery, just as the forest breeds
+romance: and mystery is a measureless realm.  If we conceive it, we have
+a mysterious claim on her who is the heart of it.
+
+He marched on that road to the music of sonorous brass for some drunken
+minutes.
+
+The question came, What of the man who takes advantage of her self-
+sacrifice?
+
+It soon righted him, and he did Lord Ormont justice, and argued the case
+against Lady Charlotte's naked hints.
+
+This dark-eyed heroine's bearing was assured, beyond an air of
+dependency.  Her deliberate short nod to him at his leave-taking, and the
+toneless few words she threw to my lord, signified sufficiently that she
+did not stand defying the world or dreading it.
+
+She had by miracle the eyes which had once charmed him--could again--
+would always charm.  She reminded him of Aminta Farrell's very eyes under
+the couchant-dove brows--something of her mouth, the dimple running from
+a corner.  She had, as Aminta had, the self-collected and self-cancelled
+look, a realm in a look, that was neither depth nor fervour, nor a
+bestowal, nor an allurement; nor was it an exposure, though there seemed
+no reserve.  One would be near the meaning in declaring it to bewilder
+men with the riddle of openhandedness.  We read it--all may read it--as
+we read inexplicable plain life; in which let us have a confiding mind,
+despite the blows at our heart, and some understanding will enter us.
+
+He shut the door upon picture and speculations, returning to them by
+another door.   The lady had not Aminta's freshness: she might be taken
+for an elder sister of Aminta.  But Weyburn wanted to have her position
+defined before he set her beside Aminta.  He writhed under Lady
+Charlotte's tolerating scorn of "the young woman."  It roused an uneasy
+sentiment of semi-hostility in the direction of my lord; and he had no
+personal complaint to make.
+
+Lord Ormont was cordial on the day of the secretary's installation; as
+if--if one might dare to guess it--some one had helped him to a friendly
+judgement.
+
+The lady of Aminta's eyes was absent at the luncheon table.  She came
+into the room a step, to speak to Lord Ormont, dressed for a drive to pay
+a visit.
+
+The secretary was unnoticed.
+
+Lord Ormont put inquiries to him at table, for the why of his having
+avoided the profession of arms; and apparently considered that the
+secretary had made a mistake, and that he would have committed a greater
+error in becoming a soldier--"in this country."  A man with a grievance
+is illogical under his burden.  He mentioned the name "Lady Ormont"
+distinctly during some remarks on travel.  Lady Ormont preferred the
+Continent.
+
+Two days later she came to the armchair, as before, met Weyburn's eyes
+when he raised them; gave him no home in hers--not a temporary shelter
+from the pelting of interrogations.  She hardly spoke.  Why did she come?
+
+But how was it that he was drawn to think of her?  Absent or present, she
+was round him, like the hills of a valley.  She was round his thoughts--
+caged them; however high, however far they flew, they were conscious of
+her.
+
+She took her place at the midday meal.  She had Aminta's voice in some
+tones; a mellower than Aminta's--the voice of one of Aminta's family.
+She had the trick of Aminta's upper lip in speaking.  Her look on him was
+foreign; a civil smile as they conversed.  She was very much at home with
+my lord, whom she rallied for his addiction to his Club at a particular
+hour of the afternoon.  She conversed readily.  She reminded him,
+incidentally that her aunt would arrive early next day.  He informed her,
+some time after, of an engagement "to tiffin with a brother officer," and
+she nodded.
+
+They drove away together while the secretary was at his labour of sorting
+the heap of autobiographical scraps in a worn dispatch-box, pen and
+pencil jottings tossed to swell the mess when they had relieved an angry
+reminiscence.  He noticed, heedlessly at the moment, feminine handwriting
+on some few clear sheets among them.
+
+Next day he was alone in the library.  He sat before the box, opened it
+and searched, merely to quiet his annoyance for having left those sheets
+of the fair amanuensis unexamined.  They were not discoverable.  They had
+gone.
+
+He stood up at the stir of the door.  It was she, and she acknowledged
+his bow; she took her steps to her chair.
+
+He was informed that Lord Ormont had an engagement, and he remarked,
+"I can do the work very well."  She sat quite silent.
+
+He read first lines of the scraps, laid them in various places, as in a
+preparation for conjurer's tricks at cards; refraining from a glance,
+lest he should disconcert the eyes he felt to be on him fitfully.
+
+At last she spoke, and he knew Aminta in his hearing and sight.
+
+"Is Emile Grenat still anglomane?"
+
+An instant before her voice was heard he had been persuading himself
+that the points of unlikeness between his young Aminta and this tall and
+stately lady of the proud reserve in her bearing flouted the resemblance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+IN WHICH THE SHADES OF BROWNY AND MATEY ADVANCE AND RETIRE
+
+
+"Emile is as anglomane as ever, and not a bit less a Frenchman," Weyburn
+said, in a tone of one who muffles a shock at the heart.
+
+"It would be the poorer compliment to us," she rejoined.
+
+They looked at one another; she dropped her eyelids, he looked away.
+
+She had the grand manner by nature.  She was the woman of the girl once
+known.
+
+"A soldier, is he?"
+
+"Emile's profession and mine are much alike, or will be."
+
+"A secretary?"
+
+Her deadness of accent was not designed to carry her opinion of the post
+of secretary.
+
+It brought the reply: "We hope to be schoolmasters."
+
+She drew in a breath; there was a thin short voice, hardly voice, as when
+one of the unschooled minor feelings has been bruised.  After a while she
+said--
+
+"Does he think it a career?"
+
+"Not brilliant."
+
+"He was formed for a soldier."
+
+"He had to go as the road led."
+
+"A young man renouncing ambition!"
+
+"Considering what we can do best."
+
+"It signifies the taste for what he does."
+
+"Certainly that."
+
+Weyburn had senses to read the word "schoolmaster" in repetition behind
+her shut mouth.  He was sharply sensible of a fall.
+
+The task with his papers occupied him.  If he had a wish, it was to sink
+so low in her esteem as to be spurned.  A kick would have been a
+refreshment.  Yet he was unashamed of the cause invoking it.  We are
+instruments to the touch of certain women, and made to play strange
+tunes.
+
+"Mr. Cuper flourishes?"
+
+"The school exists.  I have not been down there.  I met Mr. Shalders
+yesterday.  He has left the school."
+
+"You come up from Olmer?"
+
+"I was at Olmer last week, Lady Ormont."
+
+An involuntary beam from her eyes thanked him for her title at that
+juncture of the dialogue.  She grew more spirited.
+
+"Mr. Shalders has joined the Dragoons, has he?"
+
+"The worthy man has a happy imagination.  He goes through a campaign
+daily."
+
+"It seems to one to dignify his calling."
+
+"I like his enthusiasm."
+
+The lady withdrew into her thoughts; Weyburn fell upon his work.
+
+Mention of the military cloak of enthusiasm covering Shalders, brought
+the scarce credible old time to smite at his breast, in the presence of
+these eyes.  A ringing of her title of Lady Ormont rendered the present
+time the incredible.
+
+"I can hardly understand a young Frenchman's not entering the army," she
+said.
+
+"The Napoleonic legend is weaker now," said he.
+
+"The son of an officer!"
+
+"Grandson."
+
+"It was his choice to be,--he gave it up without reluctance?"
+
+"Emile obeyed the command of his parents," Weyburn answered; and he was
+obedient to the veiled direction of her remark, in speaking of himself:
+"I had a reason, too."
+
+"One wonders!"
+
+"It would have impoverished my mother's income to put aside a small
+allowance for me for years.  She would not have hesitated.  I then set my
+mind on the profession of schoolmaster."
+
+"Emile Grenat was a brave boy.  Has he no regrets?"
+
+"Neither of us has a regret."
+
+"He began ambitiously."
+
+"It's the way at the beginning."
+
+"It is not usually abjured."
+
+"I'm afraid we neither of us 'dignify our calling' by discontent with
+it!"
+
+A dusky flash, worth seeing, came on her cheeks.  "I respect
+enthusiasms," she said; and it was as good to him to hear as the begging
+pardon, though clearly she could not understand enthusiasm for the
+schoolmaster's career.
+
+Light of evidence was before him, that she had a friendly curiosity to
+know what things had led to their new meeting under these conditions.
+He sketched them cursorily; there was little to tell--little, that is;
+appealing to a romantic mind for interest.  Aware of it, by sympathy,
+he degraded the narrative to a flatness about as cheering as a suburban
+London Sunday's promenade.  Sympathy caused the perverseness.  He felt
+her disillusionment; felt with it and spread a feast of it.  She had to
+hear of studies at Caen and at a Paris Lycee; French fairly mastered;
+German, the same; Italian, the same; after studies at Heidelberg, Asti,
+and Florence; between four and five months at Athens (he was needlessly
+precise), in tutorship with a young nobleman: no events, nor a spot of
+colour.  Thus did he wilfully, with pain to himself, put an extinguisher
+on the youth painted brilliant and eminent in a maiden's imagination.
+
+"So there can no longer be thought of the army," she remarked; and the
+remark had a sort of sigh, though her breathing was equable.
+
+"Unless a big war knocks over all rules and the country comes praying us
+to serve," he said.
+
+"You would not refuse then?"
+
+"Not in case of need.  One may imagine a crisis when they would give
+commissions to men of my age or older for the cavalry--heavy losses of
+officers."
+
+She spoke, as if urged by a sting to revert to the distasteful: "That
+profession--must you not take...enter into orders if you aim at any
+distinction?"
+
+"And a member of the Anglican Church would not be allowed to exchange his
+frock for a cavalry sabre," said he.  "That is true.  I do not propose to
+settle as a schoolmaster in England."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"On the Continent."
+
+"Would not America be better?"
+
+"It would not so well suit the purpose in view for us."
+
+"There are others besides?"
+
+"Besides Emile, there is a German and an Italian and a Swiss."
+
+"It is a Company?"
+
+"A Company of schoolmasters!  Companies of all kinds are forming.
+Colleges are Companies.  And they have their collegians.  Our aim is at
+pupils; we have no ambition for any title higher than School and
+Schoolmaster; it is not a Company."
+
+So, like Nature parading her skeleton to youthful adorers of her face, he
+insisted on reducing to hideous material wreck the fair illusion, which
+had once arrayed him in alluring promise.
+
+She explained; "I said, America.  You would be among Protestants in
+America."
+
+"Catholics and Protestants are both welcome to us, according to our
+scheme.  And Germans, French, English, Americans, Italians, if they will
+come; Spaniards and Portuguese, and Scandinavians, Russians as well.  And
+Jews; Mahommedans too, if only they will come!  The more mixed, the more
+it hits our object."
+
+"You have not stated where on the Continent it is to be."
+
+"The spot fixed on is in Switzerland."
+
+"You will have scenery."
+
+"I hold to that, as an influence."
+
+A cool vision of the Bernese Alps encircled the young schoolmaster; and
+she said, "It would influence girls; I dare say."
+
+"A harder matter with boys, of course--at first.  We think we may make it
+serve."
+
+"And where is the spot?  Is that fixed on?"
+
+"Fifteen miles from Berne, on elevated land, neighbouring a water, not
+quite to be called a lake, unless in an auctioneer's advertisement."
+
+"I am glad of the lake.  I could not look on a country home where there
+was no swimming.  You will be head of the school."
+
+"There must be a head."
+
+"Is the school likely to be established soon?"
+
+He fell into her dead tone: "Money is required for establishments.
+I have a Reversion coming some day; I don't dabble in post obits."
+
+He waited for farther questions.  They were at an end.
+
+"You have your work to do, Mr. Weyburn."
+
+Saying that, she bowed an implied apology for having kept him from it,
+and rose.  She bowed again as she passed through the doorway, in
+acknowledgment of his politeness.
+
+Here; then, was the end of the story of Browny and Matey.  Such was his
+thought under the truncheon-stroke of their colloquy.  Lines of Browny's
+letters were fiery waving ribands about him, while the coldly gracious
+bow of the Lady wrote Finis.
+
+The gulf between the two writings remained unsounded.  It gave a heave to
+the old passion; but stirred no new one; he had himself in hand now, and
+he shut himself up when the questions bred of amazement buzzed and
+threatened to storm.  After all, what is not curious in this world?  The
+curious thing would be if curious things should fail to happen.  Men have
+been saying it since they began to count and turn corners.  And let us
+hold off from speculating when there is or but seems a shadow of
+unholiness over that mole-like business.  There shall be no questions;
+and as to feelings, the same.  They, if petted for a moment beneath the
+shadow, corrupt our blood.  Weyburn was a man to have them by the throat
+at the birth.
+
+Still they thronged; heavy work of strangling had to be done.  Her tone
+of disappointment with the schoolmaster bit him, and it flattered him.
+The feelings leapt alive, equally venomous from the wound and the caress.
+They pushed to see, had to be repelled from seeing, the girl Browny in
+the splendid woman; they had lightning memories: not the pain of his grip
+could check their voice on the theme touching her happiness or the
+reverse.  And this was an infernal cunning.  He paused perforce to
+inquire, giving them space for the breeding of their multitudes.  Was she
+happy?  Did she not seem too meditative, enclosed, toneless, at her age?
+Vainly the persecuted fellow said to himself: "But what is it to me
+now?"--The Browny days were over.  The passion for the younger Aminta was
+over--buried; and a dream of power belonging to those days was not yet
+more than visionary.  It had moved her once, when it was a young
+soldier's.  She treated the schoolmaster's dream as vapour, and the old
+days as dead and ghostless.  She did rightly.  How could they or she or
+he be other than they were!
+
+With that sage exclamation, he headed into the Browny days and breasted
+them; and he had about him the living foamy sparkle of the very time,
+until the Countess of Ormont breathed the word "Schoolmaster"; when, at
+once, it was dusty land where buoyant waters had been, and the armies of
+the facts, in uniform drab, with some feathers and laces, and a
+significant surpliced figure, decorously covering the wildest of Cupids,
+marched the standard of the winking gold-piece, which is their nourishing
+sun and eclipser of all suns that foster dreams.
+
+As you perceive, he was drawing swiftly to the vortex of the fools, and
+round and round he went, lucky to float.
+
+His view of the business of the schoolmaster plucked him from the whirl.
+She despised it; he upheld it.  He stuck to his view, finding their
+antagonism on the subject wholesome for him.  All that she succeeded in
+doing was to rob it of the aurora colour clothing everything on which
+Matey Weyburn set his aim.  Her contempt of it, whether as a profession
+in itself or as one suitable to the former young enthusiast for arms,
+dwarfed it to appear like the starved plants under Greenland skies.  But
+those are of a sturdy genus; they mean to live; they live, perforce, of
+the right to live; they will prove their right in a coming season, when
+some one steps near and wonders at them, and from more closely observing;
+gets to understand, learning that the significance and the charm of earth
+will be as well shown by them as by her tropical fair flaunters or the
+tenderly-nurtured exotics.
+
+An unopened coffer of things to be said in defence of--no, on behalf of
+--no, in honour of the Profession of Schoolmaster, perhaps to the
+convincing of Aminta, Lady Ormont, was glanced at; a sentence or two
+leapt out and stepped forward, and had to retire.  He preferred to the
+fathering of tricky, windy phrases, the being undervalued--even by her.
+He was taught to see again how Rhetoric haunts, and Rhetoric bedevils,
+the vindication of the clouded, especially in the case of a disesteemed
+Profession requiring one to raise it and impose it upon the antagonistic
+senses for the bewildering of the mind.  One has to sound it loudly;
+there is no treating it, as in the advocacy of the cases of flesh and
+blood, with the masterly pathos of designed simplicity.  And Weyburn was
+Cuper's Matey Weyburn still in his loathing of artifice to raise emotion,
+loathing of the affected, the stilted, the trumpet of speech--always
+excepting school-exercises in the tongues, the unmasking of a Catiline,
+the address of a General, Athenian or other, to troops.
+
+He kept his coffer shut; and, for a consequence, he saw the contents as
+an avenue of blossom leading to vistas of infinite harvest.
+
+She was Lady Ormont: Aminta shared the title of his old hero!  He refused
+to speculate upon how it had come to pass, and let the curtain hang,
+though dramas and romances, with the miracles involved in them, were
+agitated by a transient glimpse at the curtain.
+
+Well! and he hoped to be a member of the Profession she despised: hoped
+it with all his heart.  And one good effect of his giving his heart to
+the hope was, that he could hold from speculating and from feeling, even
+from pausing to wonder at the most wonderful turn of events.  Blessed
+antagonism drove him to be braced by thoughts upon the hardest of the
+schoolmaster's tasks--bright winter thoughts, prescribing to him
+satisfaction with a faith in the sowing, which may be his only reaping.
+Away fly the boys in sheaves.  After his toil with them, to instruct,
+restrain, animate, point their minds, they leave him, they plunge into
+the world and are gone.  Will he see them again?  It is a flickering
+perhaps.  To sustain his belief that he has done serviceable work, he
+must be sore of his having charged them with good matter.  How can the
+man do it, if, during his term of apprenticeship, he has allowed himself
+to dally here and there, down to moony dreamings over inscrutable
+beautiful eyes of a married lady; for the sole reason that he meets her
+unexpectedly, after an exchange of letters with her in long-past days at
+school, when she was an inexperienced girl, who knew not what she vowed,
+and he a flighty-headed youngster, crying out to be the arrow of any bow
+that was handy?  Yea, she was once that girl, named Browny by the boys.
+
+Temptation threw warm light on the memory, and very artfully, by
+conjuring up the faces, cries, characters, all the fun of the boys.
+There was no possibility of forgetting her image in those days; he had,
+therefore, to live with it and to live near the grown woman--Time's
+present answer to the old riddle.  It seemed to him, that instead of
+sorting Lord Ormont's papers, he ought to be at sharp exercise.
+According to his prescript, sharp exercise of lungs and limbs is a man's
+moral aid against temptation.  He knew it as the one trusty antidote for
+him, who was otherwise the vessel of a temperament pushing to mutiny.
+Certainly it is the best philosophy youth can pretend to practise; and
+Lord Ormont kept him from it!  Worse than that, the slips and sheets of
+paper in the dispatch-box were not an exercise of the mind even; there
+was nothing to grapple with--no diversion; criticism passed by them
+indulgently, if not benevolently.
+
+Quite apart from the subject inscribed on them, Weyburn had now and again
+a blow at the breast, of untraceable origin.  For he was well enough
+aware that the old days when Browny imagined him a hero, in drinking his
+praises of a brighter, were drowned.  They were dead; but here was she
+the bride of the proved hero.  His praises might have helped in causing
+her willingness--devotional readiness, he could fancy--to yield her hand.
+Perhaps at the moment when the hero was penning some of the Indian slips
+here, the boy at school was preparing Aminta; but he could not be
+responsible for a sacrifice of the kind suggested by Lady Charlotte.  And
+no, there had been no such sacrifice, although Lord Ormont's inexplicable
+treatment of his young countess, under cover of his notorious reputation
+with women, conduced to the suspicion.
+
+While the vagrant in Weyburn was thus engaged, his criticism of the
+soldier-lord's field-English on paper let the stuff go tolerantly
+unexamined, but with a degree of literary contempt at heart for the
+writer who had that woman-scented reputation and expressed himself so
+poorly.  The sentiment was outside of reason.  We do, nevertheless,
+expect our Don Juans to deliver their minds a trifle elegantly; if not in
+classic English, on paper; and when we find one of them inflicting
+cruelty, as it appears, and the victim is a young woman, a beautiful
+young woman, she pleads to us poetically against the bearish sentences of
+his composition.  We acknowledge, however, that a mere sentiment,
+entertained possibly by us alone, should not be permitted to condemn him
+unheard.
+
+Lady Ormont was not seen again.  After luncheon at a solitary table, the
+secretary worked till winter's lamps were lit; and then shone freedom,
+with assurance to him that he would escape from the miry mental ditch he
+had been floundering in since Aminta revealed herself.  Sunday was the
+glorious day to follow, with a cleansing bath of a walk along the
+southern hills; homely English scenery to show to a German friend, one of
+his "Company."  Half a dozen good lads were pledged to the walk; bearing
+which in view, it could be felt that this nonsensical puzzlement over his
+relations to the moods and tenses of a married woman would be bounced out
+of recollection before nightfall.  The landscape given off any of the
+airy hills of Surrey would suffice to do it.
+
+A lady stood among her boxes below, as he descended the stairs to cross
+the hall.  He knew her for the person Lady Charlotte called "the woman's
+aunt," whom Lord Ormont could not endure--a forgiven old enemy, Mrs.
+Nargett Pagnell.
+
+He saluted.  She stared, and corrected her incivility with "Ah, yes," and
+a formal smile.
+
+If not accidentally delayed on her journey, she had been needlessly the
+cause why Lord Ormont hugged his Club during the morning and afternoon.
+Weyburn was pushed to think of the matter by remembrance of his foregone
+resentment at her having withdrawn Aminta from Miss Vincent's three days
+earlier than the holiday time.  The resentment was over; but a germ of it
+must have sprang from the dust to prompt the kindling leap his memory
+took, out of all due connection; like a lightning among the crags.  It
+struck Aminta smartly.  He called to mind the conversation at table
+yesterday.  Had she played on Lord Ormont's dislike of the aunt to drive
+him forth for some purpose of her own?  If so, the little trick had been
+done with deplorable spontaneity or adeptness of usage.  What was the
+purpose?--to converse with an old acquaintance, undisturbed by Lord
+Ormont and her aunt?  Neatly done, supposing the surmise correct.
+
+But what was there in the purpose?  He sifted rapidly for the gist of the
+conversation; reviewed the manner of it, the words, the sound they had,
+the feelings they touched; then owned that the question could not be
+answered.  Owning, further, that the recurrence of these idiotic
+speculations, feelings, questions, wrote him down as both dull fellow and
+impertinent, he was unabled to restore Aminta to the queenly place she
+took above the schoolmaster, who was very soon laughing at his fever or
+flash of the afternoon.  The day had brought a great surprise, nothing
+more.  Twenty minutes of fencing in the a salle d'armes of an Italian
+captain braced him to health, and shifted scenes of other loves, lighter
+loves, following the Browny days--not to be called loves; in fact; hardly
+beyond inclinations.  Nevertheless, inclinations are an infidelity.  To
+meet a married woman, and be mooning over her because she gave him her
+eyes and her handwriting when a girl, was enough to rouse an honest
+fellow's laugh at himself, in the contemplation of his intermediate
+amorous vagabondage.  Had he ever known the veritable passion after
+Browny sank from his ken?  Let it be confessed, never.  His first love
+was his only true love, despite one shuddering episode, oddly humiliating
+to recollect, though he had not behaved badly.  So, then, by right of his
+passion, thus did eternal justice rule it: that Browny belonged, to Matey
+Weyburn, Aminta to Lord Ormont.  Aminta was a lady blooming in the flesh,
+Browny was the past's pale phantom; for which reason he could call her
+his own, without harm done to any one, and with his usual appetite for
+dinner, breakfast, lunch, whatever the meal supplied by the hour.
+
+It would somewhat alarmingly have got to Mr. Weyburn's conscience through
+a disturbance of his balance, telling him that he was on a perilous road,
+if his relish for food had been blunted.  He had his axiom on the
+subject, and he was wrong in the general instance, for the appetites of
+rogues and ogres are not known to fail.  As regarded himself, he was
+eminently right; and he could apply it to boys also, to all young people
+--the unlaunched, he called them.  He counted himself among the launched,
+no doubt, and had breasted seas; but the boy was alive, a trencherman
+lad, in the coming schoolmaster, and told him profitable facts concerning
+his condition; besides throwing a luminous ray on the arcane of our
+elusive youthful.  If they have no stout zest for eating, put Query
+against them.
+
+His customary enjoyment of dinner convinced Mr. Weyburn that he had not
+brooded morbidly over his phantom Browny, and could meet Aminta, Countess
+of Ormont, on the next occasion with the sentiments proper to a common
+official.  Did she not set him a commendable example?  He admired her for
+not concealing her disdain of the aspirant schoolmaster, quite
+comprehending, by sympathy, why the woman should reproach the girl who
+had worshipped heroes, if this was a full-grown specimen; and the reply
+of the shamed girl, that in her ignorance she could not know better.  He
+spared the girl, but he laughed at the woman he commended, laughed at
+himself.
+
+Aminta's humour was being stirred about the same time.  She and her aunt
+were at the dinner-table in the absence of my lord.  The dinner had
+passed with the stiff dialogue peculiar to couples under supervision of
+their inferiors; and, as soon as the room was clear, she had asked her
+aunt, touching the secretary: "Have you seen him?"
+
+Mrs. Nargett Pagnell's answer could have been amusing only to one whose
+intimate knowledge of her found it characteristically salt; for she was a
+lady of speech addressed ever directly or roundabout to the chief point
+of business between herself and her hearer, and the more she was brief,
+oblique, far-shooting, the more comically intelligible she was to her
+niece.  She bent her head to signify that she had seen the secretary, and
+struck the table with both hands, exclaiming:
+
+"Well, to be sure, Lord Ormont!"
+
+Their discussion, before they descended the stairs to dinner, concerned
+his lordship's extraordinary indifference to the thronging of handsome
+young men around his young countess.
+
+Here, the implication ran, is one established in the house.
+
+Aminta's thoughts could be phrased: "Yes, that is true, for one part of
+it."
+
+As for the other part, the ascent of a Phoebus Apollo, with his golden
+bow and quiver off the fairest of Eastern horizon skies, followed
+suddenly by the sight of him toppling over in Mr. Cuper's long-skirted
+brown coat, with spectacles and cane, is an image that hardly exceeds the
+degradation she conceived.  It was past ludicrous; yet admitted of no
+woefulness, nothing soothingly pathetic.  It smothered and barked at the
+dreams of her blooming spring of life, to which her mind had latterly
+been turning back, for an escape from sour, one may say cynical,
+reflections, the present issue of a beautiful young woman's first savour
+of battle with the world.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A female free-thinker is one of Satan's concubines
+A free-thinker startles him as a kind of demon
+All that Matey and Browny were forbidden to write they looked
+Cajoled like a twenty-year-old yahoo at college
+Could not understand enthusiasm for the schoolmaster's career
+Curious thing would be if curious things should fail to happen
+Few men can forbear to tell a spicy story of their friends
+He began ambitiously--It's the way at the beginning
+He loathed a skulker
+I'm for a rational Deity
+Loathing of artifice to raise emotion
+Nevertheless, inclinations are an infidelity
+Published Memoirs indicate the end of a man's activity
+The despot is alert at every issue, to every chance
+Things were lumpish and gloomy that day of the week
+We shall want a war to teach the country the value of courage
+You'll have to guess at half of everything he tells you
+You're going to be men, meaning something better than women
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+VI.       IN A MOOD OF LANGUOR
+VII.      EXHIBITS EFFECTS OF A PRATTLER'S DOSES
+VIII.     MRS. LAWRENCE FINCHLEY
+IX.       A FLASH OF THE BRUISED WARRIOR
+X.        A SHORT PASSAGE IN THE GAME PLAYED BY TWO
+XI.       THE SECRETARY TAKEN AS AN ANTIDOTE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+IN A MOOD OF LANGUOR
+
+Up in Aminta's amber dressing-room; Mrs. Nargett Pagnell alluded sadly to
+the long month of separation, and begged her niece to let her have in
+plain words an exact statement of the present situation; adding, "Items
+will do."  Thereupon she slipped into prattle and held the field.
+
+She was the known, worthy, good, intolerable woman whom the burgess turns
+out for his world in regiments, that do and look and all but step alike;
+and they mean well, and have conventional worships and material
+aspirations, and very peculiar occult refinements, with a blind head and
+a haphazard gleam of acuteness, impressive to acquaintances, convincing
+themselves that they impersonate sagacity.  She had said this, done that;
+and it was, by proof, Providence consenting, the right thing.  A niece,
+written down in her girlhood, because of her eyes and her striking air
+and excellent deportment, as mate for a nobleman, marries, him before she
+is out of her teens.  "I said, She shall be a countess."  A countess she
+is.  Providence does not comply with our predictions in order to stultify
+us.  Admitting the position of affairs for the moment as extraordinary,
+we are bound by what has happened to expect they will be conformable in
+the end.  Temporarily warped, we should say of them.
+
+She could point to the reason: it was Lord Ormont's blunt
+misunderstanding of her character.  The burgess's daughter was refining
+to an appreciation of the exquisite so rapidly that she could criticize
+patricians.  My lord had never forgiven her for correcting him in his
+pronunciation of her name by marriage.  Singular indeed; but men, even
+great men, men of title, are so, some of them, whom you could least
+suspect of their being so.  He would speak the "g" in Nargett, and he,
+declined--after a remonstrance he declined--to pass Pagnell under the
+cedilla.  Lord Ormont spoke the name like a man hating it, or an English
+rustic: "Nargett Pagnell," instead, of the soft and elegant "Naryett
+Pagnell," the only true way of speaking it; and she had always taken that
+pronunciation of her name for a test of people's breeding.  The
+expression of his lordship's countenance under correction was memorable.
+Naturally, in those honeymoony days, the young Countess of Ormont sided
+with her husband the earl; she declared that her aunt had never dreamed
+of the cedilla before the expedition to Spain.  When, for example, Alfred
+Nargett Pagnell had a laughing remark, which Aminta in her childhood must
+have heard: "We rhyme with spaniel!"
+
+That was the secret of Lord Ormont's prepossession against Aminta's aunt;
+and who can tell? perhaps of much of his behaviour to the beautiful young
+wife he at least admired, sincerely admired, though he caused her to hang
+her head--cast a cloud on the head so dear to him!
+
+Otherwise there was no interpreting his lordship.  To think of herself as
+personally disliked by a nobleman stupefied Mrs. Pagnell, from her just
+expectation of reciprocal dealings in high society; for she confessed
+herself a fly to a title.  Where is the shame, if titles are created to
+attract?  Elsewhere than in that upper circle, we may anticipate hard
+bargains; the widow of a solicitor had not to learn it.  But when a
+distinguished member and ornament of the chosen seats above blew cold
+upon their gesticulatory devotee, and was besides ungrateful; she was
+more than commonly assured of his being, as she called him, "a sphinx."
+His behaviour to his legally wedded wife confirmed the charge.
+
+She checked her flow to resume the question.  "So, then, where are we
+now?  He allows you liberally for pin-money in addition to your own small
+independent income.  Satisfaction with that would warrant him to suppose
+his whole duty done by you."
+
+"We are where we were, aunty; the month has made no change," said Aminta
+in languor.
+
+"And you as patient as ever?"
+
+"I am supposed to have everything a woman can require."
+
+"Can he possibly think it?  And I have to warn you, child, that lawyers
+are not so absolving as the world is with some of the ladies Lord Ormont
+allows you to call your friends.  I have been hearing--it is not mere
+airy tales one hears from lawyers about cases in Courts of Law.  Tighten
+your lips as you like; I say nothing to condemn or reflect on Mrs.
+Lawrence Finchley.  I have had my eyes a little opened, that is all.  Oh,
+I know my niece Aminta, when it's a friend to stand by; but our position
+--thanks to your inscrutable lord and master--demands of us the utmost
+scrupulousness, or it soon becomes a whirl and scandal flying about, and
+those lawyers picking up and putting together.  I have had a difficulty
+to persuade them!... and my own niece! whom I saw married at the British
+Embassy in Madrid, as I take good care to tell everybody; for it was my
+doing; I am the responsible person! and by an English Protestant
+clergyman, to all appearance able to walk erect in and out of any of
+these excellent new Life Assurance offices they are starting for the
+benefit of widows and orphans, and deceased within six days of the
+ceremony--if ceremony one may call the hasty affair in those foreign
+places.  My dear, the instant I heard it I had a presentiment, 'All has
+gone well up to now.'  I remember murmuring the words.  Then your letter,
+received in that smelly Barcelona: Lord Ormont was carrying you off to
+Granada--a dream of my infancy!  It may not have been his manoeuvre, but
+it was the beginning of his manoeuvres."
+
+Aminta shuddered.  "And tra-la-la, and castanets, and my Cid! my Cid! and
+the Alhambra, the Sierra Nevada, and ay di me, Alhama; and Boabdil el
+Chico and el Zagal and Fray Antonio Agapida!"  She flung out the rattle,
+yawning, with her arms up and her head back, in the posture of a woman
+wounded.  One of her aunt's chance shots had traversed her breast,
+flashing at her the time, the scene, the husband, intensest sunniness on
+sword-edges of shade,--and now the wedded riddle; illusion dropping mask,
+romance in its anatomy, cold English mist.  Ah, what a background is the
+present when we have the past to the fore!  That filmy past is diaphanous
+on heaving ribs.
+
+She smiled at the wide-eyed little gossip.  "Don't speak of manaoeuvres,
+dear aunt.  And we'll leave Granada to the poets.  I'm tired.  Talk of
+our own people, on your side and my father's, and as much as you please
+of the Pagnell-Pagnells, they refresh me.  Do they go on marrying?"
+
+"Why, my child, how could they go on without it?"
+
+Aminta pressed her hands at her eyelids.  "Oh, me!" she sighed, feeling
+the tear come with a sting from checked laughter.  "But there are
+marriages, aunty, that don't go on, though Protestant clergymen
+officiated.  Leave them unnoticed, I have really nothing to tell."
+
+"You have not heard anything of Lady Eglett?"
+
+"Lady Charlotte Eglett?  No syllable.  Or wait--my lord's secretary was
+with her at Olmer; approved by her, I have to suppose."
+
+"There, my dear, I say again I do dread that woman, if she can make a man
+like Lord Ormont afraid of her.  And no doubt she is of our old
+aristocracy.  And they tell me she is coarse in her conversation--like a
+man.  Lawyers tell me she is never happy but in litigation.  Years back,
+I am given to understand, she did not set so particularly good an
+example.  Lawyers hear next to everything.  I am told she lifted her
+horsewhip on a gentleman once, and then put her horse at him and rode him
+down.  You will say, the sister of your husband.  No; not to make my
+niece a countess, would I, if I had known the kind of family!  Then one
+asks, Is she half as much afraid of him?  In that case, no wonder they
+have given up meeting.  Was formerly one of the Keepsake Beauties.  Well,
+Lady Eglett, and Aminta, Countess of Ormont, will be in that Peerage, as
+they call it, let her only have her dues.  My dear, I would--if I ever
+did--swear the woman is jealous."
+
+"Of me, aunty!"
+
+"I say more; I say again, it would be a good thing for somebody if
+somebody had his twitch of jealousy.  Wives may be too meek.  Cases and
+cases my poor Alfred read to me, where an ill-behaving man was brought to
+his senses by a clever little shuffle of the cards, and by the most
+innocent of wives.  A kind of poison to him, of course; but there are
+poisons that cure.  It might come into the courts; and the nearer the
+proofs the happier he in withdrawing from his charge and effecting a
+reconciliation.  Short of guilt, of course.  Men are so strange.  Imagine
+now, if a handsome young woman were known to be admired rather more than
+enough by a good-looking gentleman near about her own age.  Oh, I've no
+patience with, the man for causing us to think and scheme!  Only there
+are men who won't be set right unless we do. My husband used to say,
+change is such a capital thing in life's jogtrot; that men find it
+refreshing if we now and then, reverse the order of our pillion-riding
+for them.  A spiritless woman in a wife is what they bear least of all.
+Anything rather.  Is Mr. Morsfield haunting Mrs. Lawrence Finchley's
+house as usual?"
+
+Aminta's cheeks unrolled their deep damask rose at the abrupt intrusion
+of the name.  "I meet him there."
+
+"Lord Adderwood, Sir John Randeller; and the rest?"
+
+"Two or three times a week."
+
+"And the lady, wife of the captain, really a Lady Fair--Mrs....  month of
+May: so I have to get at it."
+
+"She may be seen there."
+
+"Really a contrast, when you two are together!  As to reputation, there
+is an exchange of colours.  Those lawyers hold the keys of the great
+world, and a naughty world it is, I fear--with exceptions, who are the
+salt, but don't taste so much.  I can't help enjoying the people at Mrs.
+Lawrence Finchley's.  I like to feel I can amuse them, as they do me.
+One puzzles for what they say--in somebody's absence, I mean.  They must
+take Lord Ormont for a perfect sphinx; unless they are so silly as to
+think they may despise him, or suppose him indifferent.  Oh, that upper
+class!  It's a garden, and we can't help pushing to enter it; and fair
+flowers, indeed, but serpents too, like the tropics.  It tries us more
+than anything else in the world--well, just as good eating tries the
+constitution.  He ought to know it and feel it, and give his wife all the
+protection of his name, instead of--not that he denies: I have brought
+him to that point; he cannot deny it with me.  But not to present her--to
+shun the Court; not to introduce her to his family, to appear ashamed of
+her!  My darling Aminta, a month of absence for reflection on your
+legally-wedded husband's conduct increases my astonishment.  For usually
+men old enough to be the grandfathers of their wives--"
+
+"Oh, pray, aunty, pray, pray!" Aminta cried, and her body writhed.  "No
+more to-night.  You mean well, I am sure.  Let us wait.  I shall sleep,
+perhaps, if I go to bed early.  I dare say I am spiritless--not worth
+more than I get.  I gave him the lead altogether; he keeps it.  In
+everything else he is kind; I have all the luxuries--enough to loathe
+them.  Kiss me and say good night."
+
+Aminta made it imperative by rising.  Her aunt stood up, kissed, and
+exclaimed, "I tell you you are a queenly creature, not to be treated as
+any puny trollop of a handmaid.  And although he is a great nobleman, he
+is not to presume to behave any longer, my dear, as if your family had no
+claim on his consideration.  My husband, Alfred Pagnell, would have laid
+that before him pretty quick.  You are the child of the Farrells and the
+Solers, both old families; on your father's side you are linked with the
+oldest nobility in Europe.  It flushes one to think of it!  Your
+grandmother, marrying Captain Algernon Farrell, was the legitimate
+daughter of a Grandee of Spain; as I have told Lord Ormont often, and I
+defy him to equal that for a romantic marriage in the annals of his
+house, or boast of bluer blood.  Again, the Solers--"
+
+"We take the Solers for granted, aunty, good night."
+
+"Commoners, if you like; but established since the Conquest.  That is,
+we trace the pedigree.  And to be treated, even by a great nobleman, as
+if we were stuff picked up out of the ditch!  I declare, there are times
+when I sit and think and boil.  Is it chivalrous, is it generous--is it,
+I say, decent--is it what Alfred would have called a fair fulfilment of a
+pact, for your wedded husband--?  You may close my mouth!  But he
+pretends to be chivalrous and generous, and he has won a queen any
+wealthy gentleman in England--I know of one, if not two--would be proud
+to have beside him in equal state; and what is he to her?  He is an
+extinguisher.  Or is it the very meanest miserliness, that he may keep
+you all to himself?  There we are again!  I say he is an unreadable
+sphinx."
+
+Aminta had rung the bell for her maid.  Mrs. Pagnell could be counted on
+for drawing in her tongue when the domestics were near.
+
+A languor past delivery in sighs was on the young woman's breast.  She
+could have heard without a regret that the heart was to cease beating.
+Had it been downright misery she would have looked about her with less of
+her exanimate glassiness.  The unhappy have a form of life: until they
+are worn out, they feel keenly.  She felt nothing.  The blow to her pride
+of station and womanhood struck on numbed sensations.  She could complain
+that the blow was not heavier.
+
+A letter lying in her jewel-box called her to read it, for the chance of
+some slight stir.  The contents were known.  The signature of Adolphus
+Morsfield had a new meaning for her eyes, and dashed her at her husband
+in a spasm of revolt and wrath against the man exposing her to these
+letters, which a motion of her hand could turn to blood, and abstention
+from any sign maintained in a Satanic whisper, saying, "Here lies one way
+of solving the riddle."  It was her husband who drove her to look that
+way.
+
+The look was transient, and the wrath: she could not burn.  A small
+portion of contempt lodged in her mind to shadow husbands precipitating
+women on their armoury for a taste of vengeance.  Women can always be
+revenged--so speedily, so completely: they have but to dip.  Husbands
+driving wives to taste their power execrate the creature for her fall
+deep downward.  They are forgetful of causes.
+
+Does it matter?  Aminta's languor asked.  The letter had not won a reply.
+Thought of the briefest of replies was a mountain of effort, and she
+moaned at her nervelessness in body and mind.  To reply, to reproach the
+man, to be flame--an image of herself under the form she desired--gave
+her a momentary false energy, wherein the daring of the man, whose life
+was at a loss for the writing of this letter, hung lighted.  She had
+therewith a sharp vision of his features, repellent in correctness, Greek
+in lines, with close eyes, hollow temples, pressed lips--a face
+indicating the man who can fling himself on a die.  She had heard tales
+of women and the man.  Some had loved him, report said.  Here were words
+to say that he loved her.  They might, poor man, be true.  Otherwise she
+had never been loved.
+
+Memory had of late been paying visits to a droopy plant in the golden
+summer drought on a gorgeous mid-sea island, and had taken her on board
+to refresh her with voyages, always bearing down full sail on a couple of
+blissful schools, abodes of bloom and briny vigour, sweet merriment,
+innocent longings, dreams the shyest, dreams the mightiest.  At night
+before sleep, at morn before rising, often during day, and when vexed or
+when dispirited, she had issued her command for the voyage.  Sheer
+refreshment followed, as is ever the case if our vessel carries no
+freight of hopes.  There could be no hopes.  It was forgotten that they
+had ever been seriously alive.  But it carried an admiration.  Now, an
+admiration may endure, and this one had been justified all round.  The
+figure heroical, the splendid, active youth, hallowed Aminta's past.  The
+past of a bitterly  humiliated Aminta was a garden in the coming kiss of
+sunset, with that godlike figure of young manhood to hallow it.  There he
+stayed, perpetually assuring her of his triumphs to come.
+
+She could have no further voyages.  Ridicule convulsed her home of
+refuge.  For the young soldier-hero, to be unhorsed by misfortune, was
+one thing; but the meanness of the ambition he had taken in exchange for
+the thirst of glory, accused his nature.  He so certainly involved her in
+the burlesque of the transformation that she had to quench memory.
+
+She was, therefore, having smothered a good part of herself, accountably
+languid--a condition alternating with fire in Aminta; and as Mr.
+Morsfield's letter supplied the absent element, her needy instinct pushed
+her to read his letter through.  She had not yet done that with
+attention.
+
+Whether a woman loves a man or not, he is her lover if he dare tell her
+he loves her, and is heard with attention.  Aware that the sentences were
+poison, she summoned her constitutional antagonism to the mad step
+proposed, so far nullifying the virus as to make her shrink from the
+madness.  Even then her soul cried out to her husband, Who drives me to
+read?  or rather, to brood upon what she read.  The brooding ensued, was
+the thirst of her malady.  The best antidote she could hit on was the
+writer's face.  Yet it expressed him, his fire and his courage--gifts she
+respected in him, found wanting in herself.  Read by Lord Ormont, this
+letter would mean a deadly thing.
+
+Aminta did her lord the justice to feel sure of him, that with her name
+bearing the superscription, it might be left on her table, and world not
+have him to peruse it.  If he manoeuvred, it was never basely.  Despite
+resentment, her deepest heart denied his being indifferent either to her
+honour or his own in relation to it.  He would vindicate both at a
+stroke, for a sign.  Nevertheless, he had been behaving cruelly.  She
+charged on him the guilt of the small preludes, archeries, anglings,
+veilings, evasions, all done with the eyelids and the mute of the lips,
+or a skirmisher word or a fan's flourish, and which, intended to pique
+the husband rather than incite the lover, had led Mrs. Lawrence Finchley
+to murmur at her ear, in close assembly, without a distinct designation
+of Mr. Morsfield, "Dangerous man to play little games with!"  It had
+brought upon her this letter of declaration, proposal, entreaty.
+
+This letter was the man's life in her hands, and safe, of course.  But
+surely it was a proof that the man loved her?
+
+Aminta was in her five-and-twentieth year; when the woman who is
+uncertain of the having been loved, and she reputed beautiful, desirable,
+is impelled by a sombre necessity to muse on a declaration, and nibble at
+an idea of a test.  If "a dangerous man to play little games with," he
+could scarcely be dangerous to a woman having no love for him at all.  It
+meant merely that he would soon fall to writing letters like this, and he
+could not expect an answer to it.  But her heart really thanked him, and
+wished the poor gentleman to take its dumb response as his reward, for
+being the one sole one who had loved her.
+
+Aminta dwelt on "the one sole one."  Lord Ormont's treatment had detached
+her from any belief in love on his part; and the schoolboy, now ambitions
+to become a schoolmaster, was behind the screen unlikely to be lifted
+again by a woman valuing her pride of youth, though he had--behold our
+deceptions!--the sympathetic face entirely absent from that of Mr.
+Adolphus Morsfield, whom the world would count quite as handsome--nay, it
+boasted him.  He enjoyed the reputation of a killer of ladies.  Women
+have odd tastes, Aminta thought, and examined the gentleman's
+handwriting.  It pleased her better.  She studied it till the
+conventional phrases took a fiery hue, and came at her with an invasive
+rush.
+
+The letter was cast back into the box, locked up; there an end to it, or
+no interdiction of sleep.
+
+Sleep was a triumph.  Aminta's healthy frame rode her over petty
+agitations of a blood uninflamed, as lightly as she swam the troubled
+sea-waters her body gloried to cleave.  She woke in the morning peaceful
+and mildly reflective, like one who walks across green meadows.  Only by
+degrees, by glimpses, was she drawn to remember the trotting, cantering,
+galloping, leaping of an active heart during night.  We cannot, men or
+woman, control the heart in sleep at night.  There had been wild
+leapings.  Night will lead an unsatisfied heart of a woman, by way of
+sleep, to scale black mountains, jump jagged chasms.  Sleep is a horse
+that laughs at precipices and abysses.  We bid women, moreover, be all
+heart.  They are to cultivate their hearts, pay much heed to their
+hearts.  The vast realm of feeling is open to these appointed keepers of
+the sanctuary household, who may be withering virgins, may be childless
+matrons, may be unhusbanded wives.  Wandering in the vast realm which
+they are exhorted to call their own, for the additional attractiveness it
+gives them, an unsatisfied heart of woman will somewhat audaciously cross
+the borderland a single step into the public road of the vast realm of
+thinking.  Once there, and but a single step on the road, she is a rebel
+against man's law for her sex.  Nor is it urgent on her that she should
+think defiantly in order to feel herself the rebel.  She may think
+submissively; with a heart (the enlarged, the scientifically plumped, the
+pasture of epicurean man), with her coveted heart in revolt, and from the
+mere act of thinking at all.
+
+Aminta reviewed perforce, dead against her will, certain of the near-to-
+happiness ratings over-night.  She thinned her lips, and her cheeks
+glowed.  An arm, on the plea of rescuing, had been round her.  The choice
+now offered her was, to yield to softness or to think.  She took the
+latter step, the single step of an unaccustomed foot, which women
+educated simply to feet, will, upon extreme impulsion, take; and it held
+a candle in a windy darkness.  She saw no Justice there.  The sensational
+immensity touched sublime, short of that spirit of Justice required for
+the true sublime.  And void of Justice; what a sunless place is any
+realm!  Infants, the male and the female alike, first begin to know they
+feel when it is refused them.  When they know they feel, they have begun
+to reflect.  The void of Justice is  a godless region.  Women, to whom
+the solitary thought has come as a blown candle, illumining the fringes
+of their storm, ask themselves whether they are God's creatures or man's.
+The question deals a sword-stroke of division between them and their
+human masters.  Young women, animated by the passions their feeling
+bosoms of necessity breed, and under terror discover, do not distinguish
+an abstract justice from a concrete.  They are of the tribe too long
+hereditarily enslaved to conceive an abstract.  So it is with them, that
+their God is the God of the slave, as it is with all but the bravest of
+boys.  He is a Thing to cry to, a Punisher, not much of a Supporter--the
+Biblical Hebrew's right reading of Nature, favouring man, yet prompt to
+confound him, and with woman for the instrument of vengeance.  By such a
+maze the blindfolded, are brought round to see Justice on earth.  If
+women can only believe in some soul of justice, they will feel they
+belong to God--of the two; and the peril for them then is, that they will
+set the one incomprehensible Power in opposition to the other, urging
+them unsatisfied natures to make secret appeal away from man and his laws
+altogether, at the cost of losing clear sight of the God who shines in
+thought.  It is a manner whereby the desperately harried among these
+creatures of the petted heart arrive upon occasion at an agreeable,
+almost reposeful, contemplation of the reverse of God.
+
+There is little pleasure to be on the lecture-rostrum for a narrator
+sensible to the pulses of his audience.  Justice compels at times.  In
+truth, there are times when the foggy obscurities of the preacher are by
+comparison broad daylight beside the whirling loose tissues of a woman
+unexplained.  Aminta was one born to prize rectitude, to walk on the
+traced line uprightly; and while the dark rose overflowed the soft brown
+of her cheeks, under musings upon her unlicenced heart's doings
+overnight, she not only pleaded for woeful creatures of her sex burdened
+as she and erring, she weighed them in the scales with men, and put her
+heart where Justice pointed, sending men to kick aloft.
+
+Her husband, the man-riddle: she was unable to rede or read him.  Her
+will could not turn him; nor her tongue combat; nor was it granted her to
+pique the mailed veteran.  Every poor innocent little bit of an art had
+been exhausted.  Her title was Lady Ormont her condition actually slave.
+A luxuriously established slave, consorting with a singularly
+enfranchised set,--as, for instance, Mrs. Lawrence Finchley and Lord
+Adderwood; Sir John Randeller and Lady Staines; Mrs. May, Amy May,
+notorious wife of a fighting captain, the loneliest of blondes; and other
+ladies, other gentlemen, Mr. Morsfield in the list, paired or not yet
+paired: gossip raged.  Aminta was of a disposition too generously cordial
+to let her be the rigorous critic of people with whom she was in touch.
+But her mind knew relief when she recollected that her humble little
+school-mate, Selina Collect, who had suffered on her behalf in old days,
+was coming up to her from the Suffolk coast on a visit for a week.
+However much a slave and an unloved woman, she could be a constant and
+protecting friend.  Besides, Lord Ormont was gracious to little Selina.
+She thought of his remarks about the modest-minded girl after first
+seeing her.  From that she struck upon a notion of reserves of humaneness
+being in him, if she might find the path to them: and thence, fortified
+by the repose her picture of little Selina's merit had bestowed, she
+sprang to the idea of valiancy, that she would woo him to listen to her,
+without inflicting a scene.  He had been a listening lover, seeming
+lover, once, later than the Granada sunsets.  The letter in her jewel-box
+urged Aminta to clear her conscience by some means, for leaving it
+unburnt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+EXHIBITS EFFECTS OF A PRATTLER'S DOSES
+
+The rules in Lord Ormont's household assisted to shelter him for some
+hours of the day from the lady who was like a blast of sirocco under his
+roof.  He had his breakfast alone, as Lady Charlotte had it at Olmer;
+a dislike of a common table in the morning was a family trait with both.
+At ten o'clock the secretary arrived, and they were shut up together.
+At the luncheon table Aminta usually presided.  If my lord dined at home,
+he had by that time established an equanimity rendering, his constant
+civility to Mrs. Pagnell less arduous.  The presence of a woman of
+tongue, perpetually on the spring to gratify him and win him, was among
+the burdens he bore for his Aminta.
+
+Mrs. Pagnell soon perceived that the secretary was in favour.  My lord
+and this Mr. Weyburn had their pet themes of conversation, upon which the
+wary aunt of her niece did not gaze like the wintry sun with the distant
+smile her niece displayed over discussions concerning military
+biographies, Hannibal's use of his elephants and his Numidian horse, the
+Little St. Bernard, modern artillery, ancient slingers, English and
+Genoese bowmen, Napoleon's tactics, his command to the troopers to "give
+point,"  and English officers' neglect of sword exercise, and the "devil
+of a day" Old England is to have on a day to come.  My lord connected our
+day of trial with India.  Mrs. Pagnell assumed an air of studious
+interest; she struck in to give her niece a lead, that Lord Ormont might
+know his countess capable of joining the driest of subjects occupying
+exalted minds.  Aminta did not follow her; and she was extricated
+gallantly by the gentlemen in turn.
+
+The secretary behaved with a pretty civility.  Aminta shook herself to
+think tolerantly of him when he, after listening to the suggestion, put
+interrogatively, that we should profit by Hannibal's example and train
+elephants to serve as a special army corps for the perfect security of
+our priceless Indian Empire, instanced the danger likely to result from
+their panic fear of cannon, and forbore to consult Lord Ormont's eye.
+
+Mrs. Pagnell knew that she had put her foot into it; but women advised of
+being fools in what they say, are generally sustained by their sense of
+the excellent motive which impelled them.  Even to the Countess of
+Ormont, she could have replied, "We might have given them a higher idea
+of us"--if, that meant, the Countess of Ormont had entered the field
+beside her, to the exclusion of a shrinking Aminta.  She hinted as much
+subsequently, and Aminta's consciousness of the troth was touched.  The
+young schoolmaster's company sat on her spirits, deadened her vocabulary.
+Her aunt spoke of passing the library door and hearing the two gentlemen
+loudly laughing.  It seemed subserviency on the fallen young hero's part.
+His tastes were low.  He frequented the haunts of boxing men; her lord
+informed her of his having made, or of his making, matches to run or swim
+or walk certain distances against competitors or within a given time.
+He had also half a dozen boys or more in tow, whom he raced out of town
+on Sundays; a nucleus of the school he intended to form.
+
+But will not Achilles become by comparison a common rushlight where was a
+blazing torch, if we see him clap a clown's cap on the head whose golden
+helm was fired by Pallas?
+
+Nay, and let him look the hero still: all the more does he point finger
+on his meanness of nature.
+
+Turning to another, it is another kind of shame that a woman feels, if
+she consents to an exchange of letters--shameful indeed, but not such a
+feeling of deadly sickness as comes with the humiliating view of an
+object of admiration degraded.  Bad she may be; and she may be deceived,
+vilely treated, in either case.  And what is a woman's pride but the
+staff and banner of her soul, beyond all gifts?  He who wounds it cannot
+be forgiven--never!--he has killed the best of her.  Aminta found herself
+sliding along into the sentiment, that the splendid idol of a girl's
+worship is, if she discover him in the lapse of years as an
+infinitesimally small one, responsible for the woman's possible reckless
+fit of giddiness.  And she could see her nonsense; she could not correct
+it.  Lines of the letters under signature of Adolphus were phosphorescent
+about her: they would recur; and she charged their doing so on the
+discovered meanness of the girl's idol.  Her wicked memory was caused
+by his having plunged her low.
+
+Mrs. Pagnell performed the offices of attention to Mr. Weyburn in lieu of
+the countess, who seemed to find it a task to sit at the luncheon table
+with him, when Lady Ormont was absent.  "Just peeped in," she said as she
+entered the library, "to see if all was comfortable;" and gossip ensued,
+not devoid of object.  She extracted an astonishingly smooth description
+of Lady Charlotte.  Weyburn was brightness in speaking of the much-
+misunderstood lady.  "She's one of the living women of the world."
+
+"You are sure you don't mean one of the worldly women?" Mrs. Pagnell
+rejoiced.
+
+"She has to be known to be liked," he owned.
+
+"And you were, one hears, among the favoured?"
+
+"I can scarcely pretend to that, ma'am."
+
+"You were recommended."
+
+"Lady Charlotte is devoted to her brother."
+
+Mrs. Pagnell's bosom heaved.  "How strange Lord Ormont is!  One would
+suppose, with his indignation at the country for its treatment of him,
+admirers would be welcome.  Oh dear, no! that is not the way.  On board
+the packet, on our voyage to Spain, my niece in her cabin, imploring
+mercy of Neptune, as they say, I heard of Lord Ormont among the
+passengers.  I could hardly credit my ears.  For I had been hearing of
+him from my niece ever since her return from a select establishment for
+the education of young ladies, not much more than a morning's drive out
+of London, though Dover was my residence.  She had got a hero!  It was
+Lord Ormont!  Lord Ormont! all day: and when the behaviour of the country
+to him became notorious, Aminta--my niece the countess--she could hardly
+contain herself.  A secret:--I promised her--it's not known to Lord
+Ormont himself:--a printed letter in a metropolitan paper, copied into
+the provincial papers, upholding him for one of the greatest of our
+patriot soldiers and the saviour of India, was the work of her hands.
+You would, I am sure, think it really well written.  Meeting him on deck
+--the outline of the coast of Portugal for an introductory subject, our
+Peninsular battles and so forth--I spoke of her enthusiasm.  The effect
+was, to cut off all communication between us.  I had only to appear, Lord
+Ormont vanished.  I said to myself, this is a character.  However, the
+very mention of him to my niece, as one of the passengers on board--
+medicine, miraculous!  She was up in half an hour, out pacing the deck
+before evening, hardly leaning on my arm, and the colour positively
+beginning to show on her cheeks again.  He fled, of coarse.  I had
+prepared her for his eccentricities.  Next morning she was out by
+herself.  In the afternoon Lord Ormont strode up to us his--military
+step--and most courteously requested the honour of an introduction.  I
+had broken the ice at last; from that moment he was cordiality itself,
+until--I will not say, until he had called her his own--a few little
+misunderstandings!--not with his countess.  You see, a resident aunt is
+translated mother-in-law by husbands; though I spare them pretty
+frequently; I go to friends, they travel. Here in London she must have a
+duenna.  The marriage at Madrid, at the Embassy:--well, perhaps it was a
+step for us, for commoners, though we rank with the independent.  Has her
+own little pin-money--an inheritance.  Perhaps Lady Eglett gives the
+world her version.  She may say, there was aiming at station.  I reply,
+never was there a more whole-hearted love-match!  Absolutely the girl's
+heart has been his from the period of her school-days.  Oh! a little
+affair--she was persecuted by a boy at a neighbouring school.  Her
+mistress wrote me word--a very determined Romeo young gentleman indeed--
+quite alarmed about him.  In the bud! I carried her off on the spot, and
+snapped it effectually.  Warned he meant to be desperate, I kept her away
+from my house at Dover four months, place to place; and I did well.  I
+heard on my return, that a youth, answering to the schoolmistress's
+description of him, had been calling several times, the first two months
+and longer.  You have me alluding to these little nonsensical nothings,
+because she seemed born to create violent attachments, even at that early
+day; and Lady Eglett--Lady Charlotte Eglett may hear; for there is no end
+to them, and impute them to her, when really!--can she be made
+responsible for eyes innocent of the mischief they appear destined to do?
+But I am disturbing you in your work."
+
+"You are very good, ma'am," said the ghost of the determined young
+gentleman.
+
+"A slight cold, have you?" Mrs. Pagnell asked solicitously.
+
+"Dear me, no!" he gave answer with a cleared throat.
+
+In charging him with more than he wanted to carry, she supplied him with
+particulars he had wanted to know; and now he asked himself what could be
+the gain of any amount of satisfied curiosity regarding a married Aminta.
+She slew my lord on board a packet-boat; she bears the arrows that slay.
+My lord married her where the first English chaplain was to be found;
+that is not wonderful either.  British Embassy, Madrid!  Weyburn believed
+the ceremony to have been performed there: at the same time, he could
+hear Lady Charlotte's voice repeating with her varied intonation Mrs.
+Pagnell's impressive utterances; and he could imagine how the somewhat
+silly duenna aunt, so penetrable in her transparent artifices, struck
+emphasis on the incredulity of people inclined to judge of the reported
+ceremony by Lord Ormont's behaviour to his captive.
+
+How explain that strange matter?  But can there be a gain in trying to
+sound it?  Weyburn shuffled it away.  Before the fit of passion seized
+him, he could turn his eager mind from anything which had not a
+perceptible point of gain, either for bodily strength or mental
+acquisition, or for money, too, now that the school was growing palpable
+as an infant in arms and agape for the breast.  Thought of gain, and the
+bent to pursue it, is the shield of Athene over young men in the press of
+the seductions.  He had to confess his having lost some bits of himself
+by reason of his meditations latterly; and that loss, if we let it
+continue a space, will show in cramp at the wrist, logs on the legs, a
+wheezy wind, for any fellow vowed to physical trials of strength and
+skill.  It will show likewise in the brain beating broken wings--
+inability to shoot a thought up out of the body for half a minute.  And,
+good Lord! how quickly the tight-strong fellow crumbles, when once the
+fragmentary disintegration has begun!  Weyburn cried out on a heart that
+bounded off at prodigal gallops, and had to be nipped with reminders of
+the place of good leader he was for taking among the young.  Hang
+superexcellence! but we know those moanings over the troubles of a
+married woman; we know their sources, know their goal, or else we are the
+fiction-puppet or the Bedlamite; and she is a married woman, married at
+the British Embassy, Madrid, if you please! after a few weeks'
+acquaintance with her husband, who doubtless wrote his name intelligibly
+in the registrar's book, but does not prove himself much the hero when he
+drives a pen, even for so little as the signing of his name!  He signed
+his name, apparently not more than partly pledging himself to the bond.
+Lord Ormont's autobiographical scraps combined with Lady Charlotte's
+hints and Mrs. Pagnell's communications, to provoke the secretary's
+literary contempt of his behaviour to his wife.  However, the former
+might be mended, and he resumed the task.
+
+It had the restorative effect of touching him to see his old hero in
+action; whereby he was brought about to a proper modesty, so that he
+really craved no more than for the mistress of this house to breathe the
+liberal air of a public acknowledgment of her rightful position.  Things
+constituted by their buoyancy to float are remarkable for lively bobbings
+when they are cast upon the waters; and such was the case with Weyburn,
+until the agitation produced by Mrs. Pagnell left him free to sail away
+in the society of the steadiest.
+
+He decided that by not observing, not thinking, not feeling, about the
+circumstances of the household into which Fate had thrown him, he would
+best be able--probably it was the one way--to keep himself together; and
+his resolution being honest all round, he succeeded in it as long as he
+abstained from a very wakeful vigilance over simple eyesight.  For if one
+is nervously on guard to not-see, the matter starts up winged, and enters
+us, and kindles the mind, and tingles through the blood; it has us as a
+foe.  The art of blind vision requires not only practice, but an intimate
+knowledge of the arts of the traitor we carry within.  Safest for him,
+after all, was to lay fast hold of the particularly unimportant person he
+was, both there and anywhere else.  The Countess of Ormont's manner
+toward him was to be read as a standing index of the course he should
+follow; and he thanked her.  He could not quite so sincerely thank her
+aunt.  His ingratitude for the sickly dose she had administered to him
+sprang a doubt whether Lady Ormont now thanked her aunt on account of
+services performed at the British Embassy, Madrid.
+
+Certain looks of those eyes recently, when in colloquy with my lord,
+removed the towering nobleman to a shadowed landscape.
+
+Was it solely an effect of eyes commanding light, and having every shaft
+of the quiver of the rays at her disposal?  Or was it a shot from a
+powerful individuality issuing out of bondage to some physical oppressor
+no longer master of the soul, in peril of the slipping away of the body?
+Her look on him was not hate: it was larger, more terribly divine.  Those
+eyes had elsewhere once looked love: they had planted their object in a
+throbbing Eden.  The man on whom they had looked shivered over the
+thought of it after years of blank division.
+
+Rather than have those eyes to look on him their displacing unintentness,
+the man on whom they had once looked love would have chosen looks of
+wrath, the darts that kill--blest darts of the celestial Huntress, giving
+sweet sudden cessation of pain, in the one everlasting last flash of life
+with thought that the shot was hers.  Oh for the 'ayava behea' of the
+Merciful in splendour!
+
+These were the outcries of the man deciding simultaneously not to
+observe, not to think, not to feel, and husbanding calculations upon
+storage of gain for the future.  Softness held the song below.  It came
+of the fact that his enforced resolution, for the sake of sanity, drove
+his whole reflective mind backward upon his younger days, when an Evening
+and a Morning star in him greeted the bright Goddess Browny or sang
+adieu, and adored beyond all golden beams the underworld whither she had
+sunk, where she was hidden.
+
+Meanwhile, the worthy dame who had dosed him was out in her carriage,
+busy paying visits to distinguished ladies of the great world, with the
+best of excuses for an early call, which was gossip to impart, such as
+the Countess of Ormont had not yet thought of mentioning; and two or
+three of them were rather amusedly interested to hear that Lord Ormont
+had engaged a handsome young secretary, "under the patronage of Lady
+Charlotte Eglett, devoted to sports of all kinds, immensely favoured by
+both."  Gossip must often have been likened to the winged insect bearing
+pollen to the flowers; it fertilizes many a vacuous reverie.  Those
+flowers of the upper garden are not, indeed, stationary and in need of
+the missionary buzzer, but if they have been in one place unmoved for one
+hour, they are open to take animation from their visitors.  Aminta was
+pleasantly surprised next day by the receipt of a note from Mrs. Lawrence
+Finchley, begging to be invited to lunch if she came, as she had a
+purpose in the wish to meet my lord.
+
+
+
+
+[NOTE: The remainder of 'Lord Ormont and His Aminta' is taken from an
+older edition which uses single rather than double quotation marks.
+D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+MRS. LAWRENCE FINCHLEY
+
+My lord had one of his wilful likings for Isabella Lawrence Finchley,
+and he consented to the torture of an hour of Mrs. Nargett Pagnell in the
+middle of the day, just to taste the favourite he welcomed at home as he
+championed her abroad.  The reasons were numerous and intimate why she
+pleased him.  He liked the woman, enjoyed the cause for battle that she
+gave.  Weyburn, on coming to the luncheon table, beheld a lady with the
+head of a comely boy, the manner, softened in delicate feminine, of a
+capital comrade.  Her air of candour was her nature in her face; and it
+carried a guileless roguery, a placid daring, a supersensual naughtiness,
+a simplicity of repose amid the smoky reputation she created, that led
+one to think the vapour calumnious or the creature privileged.  That
+young boy's look opened him at once; he had not to warm to her,--he flew.
+Ordinarily the sweetest ladies will make us pass through cold mist and
+cross a stile or two, or a broken bridge, before the formalities are
+cleared away to grant us rights of citizenship. She was like those frank
+lands where we have not to hand out a passport at the frontier and wait
+for dubious inspection of it.
+
+She prevailed with cognizant men and with the frivolous.  Women were
+capable of appreciating her, too: as Aminta did, despite some hinted
+qualifications addressed shyly to her husband.  But these were the very
+matters exciting his particular esteem.  He was of Lady Charlotte's mind,
+in her hot zeal against injustice done to the creatures she despised; and
+yet more than she applauded a woman who took up her idiot husband's
+challenge to defend her good name, and cleared it, right or wrong, and
+beat him down on his knees, and then started for her spell of the merry
+canter over turf: an example to the English of the punishment they get
+for their stupid Puritanic tyranny--sure to be followed by a national
+helter-skelter down-hill headlong.  And Mrs. Lawrence was not one of the
+corrupt, he argued; she concealed what it was decent to conceal, without
+pouting hypocritical pretences; she had merely dispensed with idle legal
+formalities, in the prettiest curvetting airy wanton way, to divorce the
+man who tried to divorce her, and 'whined to be forgiven when he found he
+couldn't.  Adderwood was ready to marry her to-morrow, if the donkey
+husband would but go and bray his last.  Half a dozen others were heads
+off on the same course to that goal.'
+
+That was her champion's perusal of a lady candidly asserting her right
+to have breeched comrades, and paying for it in the advocacy which
+compromises.  She was taken to be and she was used as a weapon wherewith
+to strike at our Pharisees.  Women pushing out into the world for
+independence, bleed heavy payments all round.
+
+The earl's double-edged defence of her was partly a vindication of
+another husband, who allowed his wife to call her friend; he was
+nevertheless assured of her not being corrupt, both by his personal
+knowledge of the lady, and his perception of her image in the bosom of
+his wife.  She did no harm there, he knew well.  Although he was not a
+man to put his trust in faces, as his young secretary inclined to do,
+Mrs. Lawrence's look of honest boy did count among the pleadings.  And
+somewhat so might a government cruiser observe the intrusion of a white-
+sailed yacht in protected sea-waters, where licenced trawlers are at the
+haul.
+
+Talk over the table coursed as fluently as might be, with Mrs. Pagnell
+for a boulder in the stream.  Uninformed by malice, she led up to Lord
+Adderwood's name, and perhaps more designedly spoke of Mr. Morsfield, on
+whom her profound reading into the female heart of the class above her
+caused her to harp, as 'a real Antinous,' that the ladies might discuss
+him and Lord Ormont wax meditative.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence pitied the patient gentleman, while asking him in her mind
+who was the author of the domestic burden he had to bear.
+
+'It reminds me I have a mission,' she said.  'There's a fencing match
+down at a hall in the West, near the barracks; private and select:
+Soldier and Civilian; I forget who challenged--Civilian, one judges;
+Soldiers are the peaceful party.  They want you to act "umpire," as they
+call it, on the military side, my dear lord; and you will?--I have given
+my word you will bring Lady Ormont.  You will?--and not let me be
+confounded!  Yes, and we shall make a party.  I see consent.  Aminta will
+enjoy the switch of steel.  I love to see fencing.  It rouses all that is
+diabolical in me.'
+
+She sent a skimming look at the opposite.
+
+'And I,' said he, much freshened.
+
+'You fence?'
+
+'Handle the foils.'
+
+'If you must speak modestly!  Are you in practice?'
+
+'I spend in hour in Captain Chiallo's fencing rooms generally every
+evening before dinner.  I heard there the first outlines of the match
+proposed.  You are right; it was the civilian.'
+
+'Mr. Morsfield, as I suspected.'
+
+She smiled to herself, like one saying, Not badly managed, Mr. Morsfield!
+
+'Italian school?' Lord Ormont inquired, with a screw of the eyelids.
+
+'French, my lord.'
+
+'The only school for teaching.'
+
+'The simplest--has the most rational method.  Italians are apt to be
+tricky.  But they were masters once, and now and then they send out a
+fencer the French can't touch.'
+
+'How would you account for it?'
+
+'If I had to account for it, I should say, hotter blood, cool nerve,
+quick brain.'
+
+'Hum.  Where are we, then?'
+
+'We don't shine with the small sword.'
+
+'We had men neatly pinked for their slashings in the Peninsula.'
+
+'We've had clever Irishmen.'
+
+'Hot enough blood!  This man Morsfield--have you crossed the foils with
+him?'
+
+'Goes at it like a Spaniard; though Spaniards in Paris have been found
+wary enough.'
+
+My lord hummed.  'Fellow looks as if he would easily lose his head over
+steel.'
+
+'He can be dangerous.'
+
+The word struck on something, and rang.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence had a further murmur within her lips.  Her travelling eye
+met Aminta's and passed it.
+
+'But not dangerous, surely, if the breast is padded?' said Mrs. Pagnell.
+
+'Oh no, oh no; not in that case!'  Mrs. Lawrence ran out her voluble
+assent, and her eyelids blinked; her fair boy's face was mischief at
+school under shadow of the master.
+
+She said to Weyburn: 'Are you one in the list--to give our military a
+lesson?  They want it.'
+
+His answer was unheard by Aminta.  She gathered from Mrs. Lawrence's
+pleased sparkle that he had been invited to stand in the list; and the
+strange, the absurd spectacle of a young schoolmaster taking the heroic
+attitude for attack and defence wrestled behind her eyes with a suddenly
+vivid first-of-May cricketing field, a scene of snowballs flying, the
+vision of a strenuous lighted figure scaling to noble young manhood.
+Isabella Lawrence's look at him spirited the bright past out of the
+wretched long-brown-coat shroud of the present, prompting her to grieve
+that some woman's hand had not smoothed a small tuft of hair, disorderly
+on his head a little above the left parting, because Isabella Lawrence
+Finchley could have no recollection of how it used to toss feathery--wild
+at his games.
+
+My lord hummed again.  'I suspect we 're going to get a drubbing.  This
+fellow here has had his French maitre d'armes.  Show me your hand, sir.'
+
+Weyburn smiled, and extended his right hand, saying: 'The wrist wants
+exercise.'
+
+'Ha! square thumb, flesh full at the nails' ends; you were a bowler at
+cricket.'
+
+'Now examine the palms, my lord; I judge by the lines on the palms,' Mrs.
+Pagnell remarked.
+
+He nodded to her and rose.
+
+Coffee had not been served, she reminded him; it was coming in, so down
+he sat a yard from the table; outwardly equable, inwardly cursing coffee;
+though he refused to finish a meal without his cup.
+
+'I think the palms do betray something,' said Mrs. Lawrence; and Aminta
+said: 'Everything betrays.'
+
+'No, my dear,' Mrs. Pagnell corrected her; 'the extremities betray, and
+we cannot read the centre.  Is it not so, my lord?'
+
+'It may be as you say, ma'am.'
+
+She was disappointed in her scheme to induce a general examination of
+palms, and especially his sphinx lordship's.
+
+Weyburn controlled the tongue she so frequently tickled to an elvish
+gavotte, but the humour on his face touched Mrs. Lawrence's to a subdued
+good-fellow roguishness, and he felt himself invited to chat with her on
+the walk for a reposeful ten minutes in Aminta's drawing-room.
+
+Mrs. Pagnell, 'quite enjoying the company,' as she told her niece, was
+dismayed to hear her niece tell her of a milliner's appointment, positive
+for three o'clock; and she had written it in her head 'p.m., four
+o'clock,' and she had mislaid or destroyed the milliner's note; and she
+still had designs upon his lordship's palms, things to read and hint
+around her off the lines.  She departed.
+
+Lord Ormont became genial; and there was no one present who did not
+marvel that he should continue to decree a state of circumstances more or
+less necessitating the infliction he groaned under.  He was too lofty to
+be questioned, even by his favourites.  Mrs. Lawrence conjured the ghost
+of Lady Charlotte for an answer: this being Lord Adderwood's idea.
+Weyburn let his thoughts go on fermenting.  Pride froze a beginning
+stir in the bosom of Aminta.
+
+Her lord could captivate a reluctant woman's bosom when he was genial.
+He melted her and made her call up her bitterest pride to perform its
+recent office.  That might have failed; but it had support in a second
+letter received from the man accounted both by Mrs. Lawrence and by Mr.
+Weyburn 'dangerous'; and the thought of who it was that had precipitated
+her to 'play little games' for the sole sake of rousing him through
+jealousy to a sense of righteous duty, armed her desperately against him.
+She could exult in having read the second letter right through on receipt
+of it, and in remembering certain phrases; and notably in a reflection
+shot across her bewildered brain by one of the dangerous man's queer mad
+sentences: 'Be as iron as you like, I will strike you to heat'; and her
+thought: Is there assurance of safety in a perpetual defence?--all while
+she smiled on her genial lord, and signified agreement, with a smiting of
+wonderment at her heart, when he alluded to a panic shout of the country
+for defence, and said: 'Much crying of that kind weakens the power to
+defend when the real attack comes.'  Was it true?
+
+'But say what you propose?' she asked.
+
+Lord Ormont proposed vigilance and drill; a small degree of self-
+sacrifice on the part of the population, and a look-out head in the War
+Department.  He proposed to have a nation of stout-braced men laughing at
+the foreign bully or bandit, instead of being a pack of whimpering women;
+whom he likened to the randomly protestant geese of our country roadside,
+heads out a yard in a gabble of defence while they go backing.
+
+So thereupon Aminta's notion of a resemblance in the mutual thought
+subsided; she relapsed on the cushioning sentiment that she was a woman.
+And--only a woman! he might exclaim, if it pleased him; though he would
+never be able to say she was one of the whimpering.  She, too, had the
+choice to indulge in scorn of the superior man stone blind to proceedings
+intimately affecting him--if he cared!  One might doubt it.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence listened to him with a mind more disengaged, and a flitting
+disapproval of Aminta's unsympathetic ear, or reluctance to stimulate the
+devout attention a bruised warrior should have in his tent.  She did not
+press on him the post of umpire.  He consented--at her request, he said--
+to visit the show; but refused any official position that would, it was
+clearly enough implied, bring his name in any capacity whatever before
+the country which had unpardonably maltreated him.
+
+Feminine wits will be set working, when a point has been gained; and as
+Mrs. Lawrence could now say she had persuaded Lord Ormont to gratify her
+specially, she warmed to fancy she read him, and that she might have
+managed the wounded and angry giant.  Her minor intelligence, caracoling
+unhampered by harassing emotions, rebuked Aminta's for not perceiving
+that to win him round to whatever a woman may desire, she must be with
+him, outstrip him even, along the line he chooses for himself; abuse the
+country, rail at the Government, ridicule the title of English Army,
+proscribe the name of India in his hearing.  Little stings of jealousy
+are small insect bites, and do not pique a wounded giant hardly sensible
+of irritation under his huge, and as we assume for our purpose,
+justifiable wrath.  We have to speculate which way does the giant incline
+to go?  and turn him according to the indication.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence was driven by her critic mood to think Aminta relied--
+erroneously, after woman's old fashion--on the might of superb dark eyes
+after having been captured.  It seemed to her worse than a beautiful
+woman's vanity, a childishness.  But her boy's head held boy's brains;
+and Lord Ormont's praise of the splendid creature's nerve when she had to
+smell powder in Spain, and at bull-fights, and once at a wrecking of
+their carriage down a gully on the road over the Alpujarras, sent her
+away subdued, envious, happy to have kissed the cheek of the woman who
+could inspire it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A FLASH OF THE BRUISED WARRIOR
+
+The winning of Lord Ormont's consent to look on at the little bout of
+arms was counted an achievement; for even in his own rarefied upper
+circle, where the fervid sentiments are not allowed to be seen plunging,
+he had his troop of enthusiasts; and they were anxious that he should
+make an appearance in public, to take what consolation a misunderstood
+and injured man could get from evidence of the grateful esteem
+entertained for him by a party of his countrymen, who might reasonably
+expect at the same time to set eyes, at rather close quarters, on the
+wonderful dark beauty, supposed a Spaniard, occasionally beheld riding
+beside him.  If it is possible to connect a woman with the devoutest of
+their anticipations, the sons of leisure up there will do it.  But, in
+truth, an English world was having cause to ransack the dust-heaps for
+neglected men of mettle.  Our intermittent ague, known as dread of
+invasion, was over the land.  Twice down the columns of panic newspaper
+correspondence Lord Ormont saw his name cited, with the effect on him
+that such signs of national repentance approaching lodged a crabbed
+sourness in his consulting-room, whether of head or breast.
+
+He was assailed by a gusty appeal from Lady Charlotte, bidding him seize
+the moment to proclaim his views while the secretary had a private
+missive from her, wherein, between insistency and supplication, she
+directed him to bring the subject before my lord every day, and be sure
+to write out a fair copy of the epistle previous to the transmission of
+it.  'Capua' was mentioned; she brought in 'a siren,' too.  Her brother
+was to be the soldier again--fling off silken bonds.  The world might
+prate of his morality; now was the hour for showing his patriotism,
+casting aside his just anger, and backing his chief's opinion.  'A good
+chance to get their names together.'  To her brother she declared that
+the columns of the leading journal were open to him--'in large type'; he
+was to take her word for it; he had only to 'dictate away,' quite at his
+ease, just as he talked at Olmer, and leave the bother of the scribe's
+business to his aide.  'Lose no time,' she concluded; 'the country wants
+your ideas; let us have your plan.'
+
+The earl raised his shoulders, and kept his aide exclusively at the
+Memoirs.  Weyburn, however, read out to him, with accentuation, foolish
+stuff in the recurrent correspondence of the daily sheets, and a
+complacent burgess article, meant to be a summary of the controversy and
+a recommendation to the country to bask in the sun of its wealth again.
+
+'Ay, be the porker sow it's getting liker and liker to every year!' Lord
+Ormont exclaimed, and sprang on his feet.  'Take a pen.  Shut up that
+box.  We'll give 'em digestive biscuits for their weak stomachs.
+Invasion can't be done, they say!  I tell the doddered asses Napoleon
+would have been over if Villeneuve had obeyed him to the letter.
+Villeneuve had a fit of paralysis, owing to the prestige of Nelson--
+that 's as it happened.  And they swear at prestige, won't believe in it,
+because it's not fat bacon.  I tell them, after Napoleon's first battles,
+prestige did half his work for him.  It saved him at Essling from a
+plunge into the Danube; it saved him at Moskowa;  it would have marched
+him half over England at his first jump on our shingle beach.  But that
+squelch of fat citizens should be told--to the devil with them! will they
+ever learn? short of a second William!--there were eight-and-forty hours
+when the liberty of this country hung wavering in the balance with those
+Boulogne boats.  Now look at Ulm and Austerlitz.  Essling, Wagram; put
+the victors in those little affairs to front our awkward squads.  The
+French could boast a regimental system, and chiefs who held them as the
+whist-player his hand of cards.  Had we a better general than the
+Archduke Charles? or cavalry and artillery equal to the Hungarian?
+or drilled infantry numbering within eighty thousand of the Boulogne-
+Wimereux camps?  We had nothing but the raw material of courage--pluck,
+and no science.  Ask any boxing man what he thinks of the chances.
+The French might have sacrificed a fleet to land fifty thousand.
+Our fleet was our one chance.  Any foreign General at the head of fifty
+thousand trained, picked troops would risk it, and cut an 'entrechat' for
+joy of the chance.  We should have fought and bled and been marched over
+--a field of Anglo-Saxon stubble!  and Nelson riding the Channel,
+undisputed lord of the waters.  Heigh! by the Lord, this country would
+have been like a man free to rub his skin with his hand and a mortal
+disease in his blood.  Are you ready?  How anticipate a hostile march on
+the capital, is our business.'
+
+Striding up and down the library, Lord Ormont dropped his wrath to
+dictate the practical measures for defence--detesting the cat's-cry
+'defence,' he said; but the foe would bring his old growlers, and we
+should have to season our handful of regulars and mob of levies, turn the
+mass into troops.  With plenty of food, and blows daily, Englishmen soon
+get stomachs for the right way to play the game; bowl as well as bat; and
+the sooner they give up the idea of shamming sturdy on a stiff hind leg,
+the better for their chances.  Only, it's a beastly thing to see that for
+their favourite attitude;--like some dog of a fellow weak in the fists,
+weaker in the midriff, at a fair, who cries, Come on, and prays his gods
+you won't.  All for peace, the rascal boasts himself, and he beats his
+wife and kicks his curs at home.  Is there any one to help him now, he
+vomits gold and honours on the man he yesterday treated as a felon.  Ha!
+
+Bull the bumpkin disposed of, my lord drew leisurely back from the
+foeman's landing-place, at the head of a body of serious Englishmen;
+teaching them to be manageable as chess-pieces, ready as bow-strings to
+let fly.  Weyburn rejoiced to find himself transcribing crisp sentences,
+hard on the matter, without garnish of scorn.  Kent, Sussex, Surrey, all
+the southern heights about London, round away to the south-western of the
+Hampshire heathland, were accurately mapped in the old warrior's brain.
+He knew his points of vantage by name; there were no references to
+gazetteer or atlas.  A chain of forts and earthworks enables us to choose
+our ground, not for clinging to them, but for choice of time and place to
+give battle.  If we have not been playing double-dyed traitor to
+ourselves, we have a preponderating field artillery; our yeomanry and
+volunteer horsemen are becoming a serviceable cavalry arm; our infantry
+prove that their heterogeneous composition can be welded to a handy mass,
+and can stand fire and return it, and not be beaten by an acknowledged
+defeat.
+
+'That's English! yes, that's English! when they're at it,' my lord sang
+out.
+
+'To know how to take a licking, that wins in the end,' cried Weyburn; his
+former enthusiasm for the hero mounting, enlightened by a reminiscence of
+the precept he had hammered on the boys at Cuper's.
+
+'They fall well.  Yes, the English fall like men,' said my lord,
+pardoning and embracing the cuffed nation.  'Bodies knocked over, hearts
+upright.  That's example; we breed Ironsides out of a sight like that.
+If it weren't for a cursed feeble Government scraping 'conges' to the
+taxpayer--well, so many of our good fellows would not have to fall.  That
+I say; for this thing is going to happen some day, mind you, sir!  And I
+don't want to have puncheons and hogsheads of our English blood poured
+out merely to water the soil of a conquered country because English
+Governments are a craven lot, not daring risk of office by offending the
+taxpayer.  But, on!'
+
+Weyburn sent Lady Charlotte glowing words of the composition in progress.
+
+They worked through a day, and a second day--talked of nothing else in
+the intervals.  Explanatory answers were vouchsafed to Aminta's modest
+inquiries at Finch, as she pictured scenes of smoke, dust and blood from
+the overpowering plain masculine lines they drew, terrible in bluntness.
+The third morning Lord Ormont had map and book to verify distances and
+attempt a scale of heights, take names of estates, farms, parishes,
+commons, patches of woodland.  Weyburn wrote his fair copy on folio
+paper, seven-and-thirty pages.  He read it aloud to the author on the
+afternoon of the fourth day, with the satisfaction in his voice that he
+felt.  My lord listened and nodded.  The plan for the defence of
+England's heart was a good plan.
+
+He signed to have the manuscript handed to him.  A fortified London
+secure of the Thames for abundant supplies, well able to breathe within
+earthworks extending along the southern hills, was clearly shown to stand
+the loss of two big battles on the Sussex weald or more East to North-
+east, if fortune willed it.
+
+He rose from his chair, paced some steps, with bent head, came back
+thoughtfully, lifted the manuscript sheets for another examination.
+Then he stooped to the fire, spreading the edges unevenly, so that they
+caught flame.  Weyburn spied at him.  It was to all appearance the doing
+of a man who had intended it and brought it to the predetermined
+conclusion.
+
+'About time for you to be off for your turn at Chiallo's,' our country's
+defender remarked, after tossing the last half-burnt lump under the grate
+and shovelling at it.
+
+'I will go, my lord,' said Weyburn--and he was glad to go.
+
+He went, calculated his term of service under Lord Ormont.  He was young,
+not a philosopher.  Waste of anything was abhorrent to a nature pointed
+at store of daily gain, if it were only the gain in a new or a freshened
+idea; and time lost, work lost, good counsel to the nation lost,
+represented horrid vacuity to him, and called up the counter
+demonstration of a dance down the halls of madness, for proof that we
+should, at least, have jolly motion of limbs there before Perdition
+struck the great gong.  Ay, and we should be twirling with a fair form on
+the arm: woman and man; as it ought to be; twirling downward, true, but
+together.  Such a companionship has a wisdom to raise it above the title
+of madness.  Name it, heartily, pleasure; and in contempt of the moralist
+burgess, praise the dance of a woman and the man together high over a
+curmudgeonly humping solitariness, that won't forgive an injury, nurses
+rancour, smacks itself in the face, because it can't--to use the old
+schoolboy words--take a licking!
+
+These were the huddled, drunken sensations and thoughts entertained by
+Weyburn, without his reflecting on the detachment from his old hero, of
+which they were the sign.  He criticized impulsively, and fancied he did
+no more, and was not doing much though, in fact, criticism is the end of
+worship; the Brutus blow at that Imperial but mortal bosom.
+
+The person criticized was manifest.  Who was the woman he twirled with?
+She was unfeatured, undistinguished, one of the sex, or all the sex: the
+sex to be shunned as our deadly sapper of gain, unless we find the chosen
+one to super-terrestrialize it and us, and trebly outdo our gift of our
+whole self for her.
+
+She was indistinguishable, absolutely unknown; yet she murmured, or
+seemed to murmur--for there was no sound--a complaint of Lord Ormont.
+And she, or some soundless mouth of woman, said he was a splendid
+military hero, a chivalrous man, a man of inflexible honour; but had no
+understanding of how to treat a woman, or belief in her having equal life
+with him on earth.
+
+She was put aside rather petulantly, and she took her seat out of the
+whirl with submission.  Thinking she certainly was not Browny, whom he
+would have known among a million, he tried to quit the hall, and he
+twirled afresh, necessarily not alone; it is the unpardonable offence
+both to the Graces and the Great Mother for man to valse alone.  She
+twirled on his arm, uninvited; accepted, as in the course of nature;
+hugged, under dictate of the nature of the man steeled against her by the
+counting of gain, and going now at desperation's pace, by very means of
+those defensive locked steam-valves meant to preserve him from this
+madness,--for the words of the red-lipped mate, where there were no
+words, went through him like a music when the bow is over the viol,
+sweeping imagination, and they said her life was wasting.
+
+Was not she a priceless manuscript cast to the flames?  Her lord had been
+at some trouble to win her.  Or his great fame and his shadowed fortunes
+had won her.  He took her for his own, and he would not call her his own.
+He comported himself with absolute, with kindly deference to the lady
+whose more than vital spark he let the gossips puff at and blur.  He
+praised her courage, visibly admired her person, admitted her in private
+to be his equal, degraded her in public.  Could anything account for the
+behaviour of so manly and noble a gentleman?--Rhetoric made the attempt,
+and Weyburn gave up the windy business.
+
+Discovering that his fair partner of the wasting life was--he struggled
+to quench the revelation--Aminta, he stopped the dance.  If there was no
+gain in whirling fancifully with one of the sex, a spin of a minute with
+her was downright bankruptcy.
+
+He was young, full of blood; his heart led him away from the door Lord
+Ormont had exposed; at which a little patient unemotional watchfulness
+might have intimated to him something besides the simple source of the
+old hero's complex chapter of conduct.  As it was, Weyburn did see the
+rancour of a raw wound in operation.  But he moralized and disapproved;
+telling himself, truly enough, that so it would not have been with him;
+instead of sounding at my lord's character, and his condition of the
+unjustly neglected great soldier, for the purpose of asking how that raw
+wound would affect an injured veteran, who compressed, almost repressed,
+the roar of Achilles, though his military bright name was to him his
+Briseis.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A SHORT PASSAGE IN THE GAME PLAYED BY TWO
+
+Politest of men in the domestic circle and everywhere among women, Lord
+Ormont was annoyed to find himself often gruffish behind the tie of his
+cravat.  Indeed, the temper of our eminently serene will feel the strain
+of a doldrum-dulness that is goaded to activity by a nettle.  The
+forbearance he carried farther than most could do was tempted to kick,
+under pressure of Mrs. Nargett Pagnell.  Without much blaming Aminta, on
+whose behalf he submitted to it, and whose resolution to fix in England
+had brought it to this crisis, he magnanimously proposed to the Fair
+Enemy he forced her to be, and liked to picture her as being, a month in
+Paris.
+
+Aminta declined it for herself; after six or more years of travelling,
+she wished to settle, and know her country, she said: a repetition
+remark, wide of the point, and indicatory to the game of Pull she was
+again playing beneath her smooth visage, unaware that she had the wariest
+of partners at the game.
+
+'But go you--do, I beg,' she entreated.  'It will give you new
+impressions; and I cannot bear to tie you down here.'
+
+'How you can consent to be tied down here, is the wonder to me!' said he.
+'When we travelled through the year, just visited England and were off
+again, we were driving on our own road.  Vienna in April and May--what do
+you say?  You like the reviews there, and the dances, concerts, Zigeuner
+bands, military Bohemian bands.  Or Egypt to-morrow, if you like--though
+you can't be permitted to swim in the Nile, as you wanted.  Come, Xarifa,
+speak it.  I go to exile without you.  Say you come.'
+
+She smiled firmly.  The name of her honeymoon days was not a cajolery to
+her.
+
+His name had been that of the Christian Romancero Knight Durandarte, and
+she gave it to him, to be on the proper level with him, while she still
+declined.
+
+'Well, but just a month in Paris!  There's nothing doing here.  And we
+both like the French theatre.'
+
+'London will soon be filling.'
+
+'Well, but--' He stopped; for the filling of London did really concern
+her, in the game of Pull she was covertly playing with him.  'You seem to
+have caught the fever of this London; .  .  .  no bands .  .  .  no
+reviews .  .  .  Low comedy acting.'  He muttered his objections to
+London.
+
+'The society of people speaking one's own tongue, add that,' she ventured
+to say.
+
+'You know you are ten times more Spanish than English.  Moorish, if you
+like.'
+
+'The slave of the gallant Christian Knight, converted, baptized, and
+blissful.  Oh, I know.  But now we are settled in England, I have a wish
+to study English society.'
+
+'Disappointing, I assure you;--dinners heavy, dancing boorish, intrigue a
+blind-man's-buff.  We've been over it all before !'
+
+'We have.'
+
+'Admired, I dare say.  You won't be understood.'
+
+'I like my countrymen.'
+
+'The women have good looks--of the ungarnished kind.  The men are louts.'
+
+'They are brave.'
+
+'You're to see their fencing.  You'll own a little goes a long way.'
+
+'I think it will amuse me.'
+
+'So I thought when I gave the nod to Isabella your friend.'
+
+'You like her?'
+
+'You, too.'
+
+'One fancies she would make an encouraging second in a duel.'
+
+'I will remember .  .  .  when I call you out.'
+
+'Oh, my dear lord, you have dozens to choose from leave me my one if we
+are to enter the lists.'
+
+'We are, it seems; unless you consent to take the run to Paris.  You are
+to say Tom or Rowsley.'
+
+'The former, I can never feel at home in saying;  Rowsley is Lady
+Charlotte's name for you.'
+
+The name of Lady Charlotte was an invitation to the conflict between
+them.  He passed it, and said 'Durandarte runs a mile on the mouth, and
+the Coriolanus of their newspapers helps a stage-player to make lantern
+jaws.  Neither of them comes well from the lips of my girl.  After seven
+years she should have hit on a nickname, of none of the Christian suit.
+I am not "at home" either with "my lord."  However, you send me off to
+Paris alone; and you'll be alone and dull here in this London.
+Incomprehensible to me why!'
+
+'We are both wondering?' said Aminta.
+
+'You 're handsomer than when I met you first--by heaven you are!'
+
+She flushed her dark brown-red late-sunset.  'Brunes are exceptional in
+England.'
+
+'Thousands admiring you, of course!  I know, my love, I have a jewel.'
+
+She asked him: 'What are jewels for?' and he replied, 'To excite
+cupidity.'
+
+'When they 're shut in a box?'
+
+'Ware burglars!  But this one is not shut up.  She shuts herself up.  And
+up go her shoulders!  Decide to be out of it, and come to Paris for some
+life for a month.  No?  It's positive?  When do you expect your little
+school friend?'
+
+'After Easter.  Aunt will be away.'
+
+'Your little friend likes the country.  I'll go to my house agents.  If
+there 's a country house open on the upper Thames, you can have swimming,
+boating, botanizing .  .  .'
+
+He saw her throat swallow.  But as he was offering agreeable things he
+chose to not understand how he was to be compassionate.
+
+'Steignton?' she said, and did her cause no good by saying it feebly.
+
+His look of a bygone awake-in-sleep old look, drearily known to her, was
+like a strip of sunlight on a fortress wall.  It signified, Is the poor
+soul pushing me back to that again?
+
+She compelled herself to say: 'Your tenant there?'
+
+'Matter of business .  .  .  me and my tenant,' he remarked.  'The man
+pays punctually.'
+
+'The lease has expired.'
+
+'Not quite.  You are misinformed.'
+
+'At Easter.'
+
+'Ah! Question of renewing.'
+
+'You were fond of the place.'
+
+'I was fond of the place?  Thank Blazes, I'm not what I was!' He paced
+about.  'There's not a corner of the place that doesn't screw an eye at
+me, because I had a dream there. La gloire!'
+
+The rest he muttered.  'These English!' was heard.  Aminta said: 'Am I
+never to see Steignton?'
+
+Lord Ormont invoked the Powers.  He could not really give answer to this
+female talk of the eternities.
+
+'Beaten I can never be,' he said, with instinctive indulgence to the
+greater creature.  'But down there at Steignton, I should be haunted by a
+young donkey swearing himself the fellow I grew up out of.  No doubt of
+that.  I don't like him the better for it.  Steignton grimaces at a
+cavalry officer fool enough at his own risks and penalties to help save
+India for the English.  Maunderers!  You can't tell--they don't know
+themselves--what they mean.  Except that they 're ready to take anything
+you hand 'em, and then pipe to your swinging.  I served them well--and at
+my age, in full activity, they condemn me to sit and gape!'
+
+He stopped his pacing and gazed on the glass of the window.
+
+'Would you wish me not to be present at this fencing?' said Aminta.
+
+'Dear me! by all means, go, my love,' he replied.
+
+Any step his Fair Enemy won in the secret game Pull between them, she was
+undisputedly to keep.
+
+She suggested: 'It might lead to unpleasantness.'
+
+'Of what sort?'
+
+'You ask?'
+
+He emphasized: 'Have you forgotten?  Something happened after that last
+ball at Challis's Rooms.  Their women as well as their men must be
+careful not to cross me.'
+
+Aminta had confused notions of her being planted in hostile territory,
+and torn and knitted, trumpeted to the world as mended, but not
+honourably mended in a way to stop corridor scandal.  The ball at
+Challis's Rooms had been one of her steps won: it had necessitated a
+requirement for the lion in her lord to exhibit himself, and she had
+gained nothing with Society by the step, owing to her poor performance
+of the lion's mate.  She had, in other words, shunned the countenance of
+some scattered people pityingly ready to support her against the deadly
+passive party known to be Lady Charlotte's.
+
+She let her lord go; thinking that once more had she striven and gained
+nothing: which was true of all their direct engagements.  And she had
+failed because of her being only a woman!  Mr. Morsfield was foolishly
+wrong in declaring that she, as a woman, had reserves of strength.  He
+was perhaps of Lady Charlotte's mind with regard to the existence of a
+Countess of Ormont, or he would know her to be incredibly cowardly.
+Cowardly under the boast of pride, too; well, then, say, if you like, a
+woman!
+
+Yet this mere shallow woman would not hesitate to meet the terrible Lady
+Charlotte at any instant, on any terms: and what are we to think of a
+soldier, hero, lion, dreading to tell her to her face that the persecuted
+woman is his wife!
+
+'Am I a woman they can be ashamed of?' she asked, and did not seek the
+answer at her mirror.  She was in her bedroom, and she put out a hand to
+her jewel-box, fingered it, found it locked, and abandoned her idle
+project.  A gentleman was 'dangerous.'  She had not found him so.  He had
+the reputation, perhaps, because he was earnest.  Not so very many men
+are earnest.  She called to recollection how ludicrously practical he was
+in the thick of his passion.  His third letter (addressed to the Countess
+of Ormont--whom he manifestly did not or would not take to be the
+veritable Countess--and there was much to plead for his error), or was it
+his fourth?--the letters were a tropical hail-storm: third or fourth, he
+broke off a streaked thunderpeal, to capitulate his worldly possessions,
+give the names and degrees of kinship of his relatives, the exact amount
+of the rent-roll of his Yorkshire estates, of his funded property.
+
+Silly man!  but not contemptible.  He proposed everything in honour, from
+his view of it.
+
+Whether in his third, fourth, or fifth letter.  .  .  .  How many had
+come?  She drew the key from her purse, and opened a drawer.  The key of
+the jewel-box was applied to the lock.
+
+Mr. Morsfield had sent her six flaming letters.  He not only took no
+precautions, he boasted that he hailed the consequences of discovery.
+Six!
+
+She lifted a pen: it had to be done.
+
+He was briefly informed that he disturbed her peace.  She begged he would
+abstain from any further writing to her.
+
+The severity was in the brevity.  The contrast of her style and his
+appeared harsh.  But it belonged to the position.
+
+Having with one dash of the pen scribbled her three lines, she slipped
+the letter into her pocket.  That was done, and it had to be done; it
+ought to have been done before.  How simple it was when one contemplated
+it as actually done!  Aminta made the motion of a hand along the paper,
+just a flourish.  Soon after, her head dropped back on the chair, and her
+eyes shut, she took in breath through parted lips.  The brief lines of
+writing had cut away a lump of her vitality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE SECRETARY TAKEN AS AN ANTIDOTE
+
+Dusty wayfarers along a white high-road who know of a bubbling little
+spring across a stile, on the woodland borders of deep grass, are hailed
+to sit aside it awhile: and Aminta's feverishness was cooled by now and
+then a quiet conversation with the secretary ambitious to become a
+school-master.  Lady Charlotte liked him, so did her lord; Mrs. Lawrence
+had chatted with him freshly, as it was refreshing to recollect; nobody
+thought him a stunted growth.
+
+In Aminta's realized recollections, amid the existing troubles of her
+mind, the charge against him grew paler, and she could no longer quite
+think that the young hero transformed into a Mr. Cuper had deceived her,
+though he had done it--much as if she had assisted at the planting and
+watched aforetime the promise of a noble tree, to find it, after an
+interval of years, pollarded--a short trunk shooting out a shock of
+small, slim, stiff branches; dwarfed and disgraced; serviceable perhaps;
+not ludicrous or ugly, certainly, taking it for a pollard.  And he was a
+cool well-spring to talk with.  He, supposed once to be a passionate
+nature, scorned passion as a madness; he smiled in his merciful
+executioner's way at the high society, of which her aim was to pass for
+one among the butterflies or dragonflies; he had lost his patriotism; he
+labelled our English classes the skimmers, the gorgers, the grubbers, and
+stigmatized them with a friendly air; and uttered words of tolerance only
+for farmers and surgeons and schoolmasters.  But that was quite
+incidental in the humorous run of his talk, diverting to hear while it
+lasted.  He had, of course, a right to his ideas.
+
+No longer concerned in contesting them, she drank at the water of this
+plain earth-well, and hoped she preferred it to fiery draughts, though it
+was flattish, or, say, flavourless.  In the other there was excess of
+flavour--or, no, spice it had to be called.  The young schoolmaster's
+world seemed a sunless place, the world of traders bargaining for gain,
+without a glimmer of the rich generosity to venture life, give it, dare
+all for native land--or for the one beloved.  Love pressed its claim on
+heroical generosity, and instantly it suffused her, as an earth under
+flush of sky.  The one beloved!  She had not known love; she was in her
+five-and-twentieth year, and love was not only unknown to her, it was
+shut away from her by the lock of a key that opened on no estimable
+worldly advantage in exchange, but opened on a dreary, clouded round,
+such as she had used to fancy it must be to the beautiful creamy circus-
+horse of the tossing mane and flowing tail and superb step.  She was
+admired; she was just as much doomed to a round of paces, denied the
+glorious fling afield, her nature's food.  Hitherto she would have been
+shamefaced as a boy in forming the word 'love': now, believing it denied
+to her for good and all--for ever and ever--her bosom held and uttered
+the word.  She saw the word, the nothing but the word that it was, and
+she envisaged it, for the purpose of saying adieu to it--good-bye even to
+the poor empty word.
+
+This condition was attributable to a gentleman's wild rageing with the
+word, into which he had not infused the mystic spirit.  He poured hot
+wine and spiced.  If not the spirit of love, it was really the passion of
+the man.  Her tremors now and again in the reading of his later letters
+humiliated her, in the knowledge that they came of no response to him,
+but from the temporary base acquiescence; which is, with women, a
+terrible perception of the gulf of their unsatisfied nature.
+
+The secretary, cheerful at his work, was found for just the opening of a
+door.  Sometimes she hesitated--to disturb him, she said to herself,--and
+went up-stairs or out visiting.  He protested that he could work on and
+talk too.  She was able to amuse her lord with some of his ideas.  He had
+a stock of them, all his own.
+
+Ideas, new-born and naked original ideas, are acceptable at no time to
+the humanity they visit to help uplift, it from the state of beast.  In
+the England of that, period original or unknown ideas were a smoking
+brimstone to the nose, dread Arabian afrites, invisible in the air,
+jumping out of vases, armed for the slaughter of the venerable and the
+cherished, the ivy-clad and celestially haloed.  They carried the
+dishevelled Maenad's torch.  A step with them, and we were on the
+Phlegethon waters of the French Revolution.  For a publication of simple
+ideas men were seized, tried at law, mulcted, imprisoned, and not
+pardoned after the term of punishment; their names were branded: the
+horned elect butted at them; he who alluded to them offered them up,
+wittingly or not, to be damned in the nose of the public for an
+execrable brimstone stench.
+
+Lord Ormont broke through his shouts or grunts at Aminta's report of the
+secretary's ideas on various topics, particularly the proposal that the
+lords of the land should head the land in a revolutionary effort to make
+law of his crazy, top-heavy notions, with a self-satisfied ejaculation:
+'He has not favoured me with any of these puffballs of his.'
+
+The deduction was, that the author sagaciously considered them adapted
+for the ear of a woman; they were womanish--i.e. flighty, gossamer.  To
+the host of males, all ideas are female until they are made facts.
+
+This idea, proposing it to our aristocracy to take up his other ideas,
+or reject them on pain of the forfeiture of their caste and headship with
+the generations to follow, and a total displacing of them in history by
+certain notorious, frowzy, scrubby pamphleteers and publishers, Lord
+Ormont thought amazingly comical.  English nobles heading the weavers,
+cobblers, and barbers of England!  He laughed, but he said, 'Charlotte
+would listen to that.'
+
+The dread, high-sitting Lady Charlotte was, in his lofty thinking,
+a woman, and would therefore listen to nonsense, if it happened to
+strike a particular set of bells hanging in her cranium.  She patronized
+blasphemous and traitorous law-breakers, just to keep up the pluck of the
+people, not with a notion of maintaining our English aristocracy eminent
+in history.
+
+Lady Charlotte, however, would be the foremost to swoop down on the
+secretary's ideas about the education of women.
+
+On that subject, Aminta said she did not know what to think.
+
+Now, if a man states the matter he thinks, and a woman does but listen,
+whether inclining to agree or not, a perceptible stamp is left on soft
+wax.  Lord Ormont told her so, with cavalier kindness.
+
+She confessed 'she did not know what to think,' when the secretary
+proposed the education and collocation of boys and girls in one group,
+never separated, declaring it the only way for them to learn to know and
+to respect one another.  They were to learn together, play together, have
+matches together, as a scheme for stopping the mischief between them.
+
+'But, my dear girl, don't you see, the devilry was intended by Nature.
+Life would be the coldest of dishes without it.' And as for mixing the
+breeched and petticoated in those young days--'I can't enter into it,'
+my lord considerately said.  'All I can tell you is, I know boys.'
+
+Aminta persisted in looking thoughtful.  'Things are bad, as they are
+now,' she said.
+
+'Always were--always will be.  They were intended to be, if we are to
+call them bad.  Botched mendings will only make them worse.'
+
+'Which side suffers?'
+
+'Both; and both like it.  One side must be beaten at any game.  It's off
+and on, pretty equal--except in the sets where one side wears thick
+boots.  Is this fellow for starting a mixed sexes school?  Funny
+mothers!'
+
+'I suppose--' Aminta said, and checked the supposition.  'The mothers
+would not leave their girls unless they were confident .  .  . ?'
+
+'There's to be a female head of the female department?  He reckons on
+finding a woman as big a fool as himself?  A fair bit of reckoning
+enough.  He's clever at the pen. He doesn't bother me with his ideas; now
+and then I 've caught a sound of his bee buzzing.'
+
+The secretary was left undisturbed at his labours for several days.
+
+He would have been gladdened by a brighter look of her eyes at her next
+coming.  They were introspective and beamless.  She had an odd leaning
+to the talk upon Cuper's boys.  He was puzzled by what he might have
+classed, in any other woman, as a want of delicacy, when she recurred to
+incidents which were red patches of the school time, and had clearly lost
+their glow for her.
+
+A letter once written by him, in his early days at Cuper's, addressed to
+J. Masner, containing a provocation to fight with any weapons, and
+signed, 'Your Antagonist,' had been read out to the whole school, under
+strong denunciation of the immorality, the unchristian-like conduct of
+the writer, by Mr. Cuper; creating a sensation that had travelled to Miss
+Vincent's establishment, where some of the naughtiest of the girls had
+taken part with the audacious challenger, dreadful though the
+contemplation of a possible duel so close to them was.  And then the
+girls heard that the anonymous 'Your Antagonist,' on being cited to
+proclaim himself in public assembly of school-mates and masters, had
+jumped on his legs and into the name of--one who was previously thought
+by Miss Vincent's good girls incapable of the 'appalling wickedness,' as
+Mr. Cuper called it, of signing 'Your Antagonist' to a Christian school-
+fellow, having the design to provoke a breach of the law of the land and
+shed Christian blood.  Mr. Cuper delivered an impressive sermon from his
+desk to the standing up boarders and day-scholars alike, vilifying the
+infidel Greek word 'antagonist.'
+
+'Do you remember the offender's name?' the Countess of Ormont said; and
+Weyburn said--
+
+'Oh yes, I 've not forgotten the incident.'
+
+Her eyes, wherein the dead time hung just above the underlids, lingered,
+as with the wish for him to name the name.
+
+She said: 'I am curious to hear how you would treat a case of that sort.
+Would you preach to the boys?
+
+'Ten words at most.  The right assumption is that both fellows were to
+blame.  I fancy the proper way would be to appeal to the naughty girls
+for their opinion as to how the dispute should be decided.'
+
+'You impose too much on them.  And you are not speaking seriously.'
+
+'Pardon me, I am.  I should throw myself into the mind of a naughty girl
+--supposing none of these at hand--and I should let it be known that my
+eyes were shut to proceedings, always provided the weapons were not such
+as would cause a shock of alarm in female bosoms.'
+
+'You would at your school allow it to be fought out?'
+
+'Judging by the characters of the boys.  If they had heads to understand,
+I would try them at their heads.  Otherwise they are the better, they
+come round quicker to good blood, at their age--I speak of English boys
+--for a little hostile exercise of their fists.  Well, for one thing, it
+teaches them the value of sparring.'
+
+'I must imagine I am not one of the naughty sisterhood,--for I cannot
+think I should ever give consent to fighting of any description, unless
+for the very best of reasons,' said the countess.
+
+His eyes were at the trick of the quarter-minute's poising.  Her lids
+fluttered.  'Oh, I don't mean to say I was one of the good,' she added.
+
+At the same time her enlivened memory made her conscious of a warning,
+that she might, as any woman might, so talk on of past days as to take,
+rather more than was required of the antidote she had come for.
+
+The antidote was excellent; cooling, fortifying; 'quite a chalybeate,'
+her aunt would say, and she was thankful.  Her heart rose on a quiet wave
+of the thanks, and pitched down to a depth of uncounted fathoms.  Aminta
+was unable to tell herself why.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence Finchley had been announced.  On her way to the drawing
+room Aminta's brain fell upon a series of dots, that wound along a track
+to the point where she accused herself of a repented coquettry--cause of
+the burning letters she was doomed to receive and could not stop without
+rousing her lion.  She dotted backwards; there was no sign that she had
+been guilty of any weakness other than the almost--at least, in design--
+innocent first move, which had failed to touch Lord Ormont in the
+smallest degree.  Never failure more absolute!
+
+She was about to inquire of her bosom's oracle whether she greatly cared
+now.  For an answer, her brain went dotting along from Mr. Cuper's
+school, and a boy named Abner there, and a boy named Matey Weyburn, who
+protected the little Jew-boy, up to Mr. Abner in London, who recommended
+him in due season to various acquaintances; among them to Lady Charlotte
+Eglett.  Hence the introduction to Lord Ormont.  How little extraordinary
+circumstances are, if only we trace them to the source!
+
+But if only it had appeared marvellous, the throbbing woman might have
+seized on it, as a thing fateful, an intervention distinctly designed to
+waken the best in her, which was, after all, the strongest.  Yea, she
+could hope and pray and believe it was the strongest.
+
+She was listening to Isabella Lawrence Finchley, wishing she might have
+followed to some end the above line of her meditations.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence was changed, much warmer, pressing to be more than merely
+friendly.  Aminta twice gave her cheek for kisses.  The secretary had
+spoken of Mrs. Lawrence as having the look of a handsome boy; and
+Aminta's view of her now underwent a change likewise.  Compunction,
+together with a sisterly taste for the boyish fair one flying her sail
+independently, and gallantly braving the winds, induced her to kiss in
+return.
+
+'You do like me a morsel?' said Mrs. Lawrence.  'I fell in love with you
+the last time I was here.  I came to see Mr. Secretary--it's avowed; and
+I have been thinking of you ever since, of no one else.  Oh yes, for a
+man; but you caught me.  I've been hearing of him from Captain May.  They
+fence at those rooms.  And it 's funny, Mr. Morsfield practises there,
+you know; and there was a time when the lovely innocent Amy, Queen of
+Blondes, held the seat of the Queen of Brunes.  Ah, my dear, the
+infidelity of men doesn't count.  They are affected by the changeing
+moons.  As long as the captain is civil to him, we may be sure beautiful
+Amy has not complained.  Her husband is the pistol she carries in her
+pocket, and she has fired him twice, with effect.  Through love of you I
+have learnt the different opinion the world of the good has of her and of
+me; I thought we ran under a common brand.  There are gradations.  I went
+to throw myself at the feet of my great-aunt; good old great-aunt Lady de
+Culme, who is a power in the land.  I let her suppose I came for myself,
+and she reproached me with Lord Adder.  I confessed to him and ten
+others.  She is a dear, she's ticklish, and at eighty-four she laughed!
+She looked into my eyes and saw a field with never a man in it--just the
+shadow of a man.  She admitted the ten cancelled the one, and exactly
+named to me, by comparison with the erring Amy, the sinner I am and must
+be, if I 'm to live.  So, dear, the end of it is,' and Mrs. Lawrence put
+her fingers to a silken amber bow at Aminta's throat, and squared it and
+flattened it with dainty precision, speaking on under dropped eyelids,
+intent upon her work, 'Lady de Culme will be happy to welcome you
+whenever it shall suit the Countess of Ormont to accompany her
+disreputable friend.  But what can I do, dear?'  She raised her lids and
+looked beseechingly.  'I was born with this taste for the ways and games
+and style of men.  I hope I don't get on badly with women; but if I 'm
+not allowed to indulge my natural taste, I kick the stable-boards and
+bite the manger.'
+
+Aminta threw her arms round her, and they laughed their mutual peal.
+
+Caressing her still, Aminta said: 'I don't know whether I embrace a boy.'
+
+'That idea comes from a man!' said Mrs. Lawrence.  It was admitted.  The
+secretary was discussed.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence remarked: 'Yes, I like talking with him; he's bright.  You
+drove him out of me the day I saw him.  Doesn't he give you the idea of a
+man who insists on capturing you and lets it be seen he doesn't care two
+snaps of a finger?'
+
+Aminta petitioned on his behalf indifferently: 'He 's well bred.'
+
+She was inattentive to Mrs. Lawrence's answer.  The allusion of the Queen
+of Blondes had stung her in the unacknowledged regions where women
+discard themselves and are most sensitive.
+
+'Decide on coming soon to Lady de Culme,' said Mrs. Lawrence.  'Now that
+her arms are open to you, she would like to have you in them.  She is
+old--.  You won't be rigorous? no standing on small punctilios?
+
+She would call, but she does not--h'm, it is M. le Comte that she does
+not choose to--h'm.  But her arms are open to the countess.  It ought to
+be a grand step.  You may be assured that Lady Charlotte Eglett would
+not be taken into them.  My great-aunt has a great-aunt's memory.  The
+Ormonts are the only explanation--if it 's an apology--she can offer for
+the behaviour of the husband of the Countess of Ormont.  You know I like
+him.  I can't help liking a man who likes me.  Is that the way with a
+boy, Mr. Secretary?  I must have another talk with the gentleman, my
+dear.  You are Aminta to me.'
+
+'Always Aminta to you,' was the reply, tenderly given.
+
+'But as for comprehending him, I'm as far off that as Lady de Culme, who
+hasn't the liking for him I have.'
+
+'The earl?' said Aminta, showing by her look that she was in the same
+position.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence shrugged: 'I believe men and women marry in order that they
+should never be able to understand one another.  The riddle's best read
+at a moderate distance.  It 's what they call the golden mean; too close,
+too far, we're strangers.  I begin to understand that husband of mine,
+now we're on bowing terms.  Now, I must meet the earl to-morrow.  You
+will arrange?  His hand wants forcing.  Upon my word, I don't believe it
+'s more.'
+
+Mrs. Lawrence contrasted him in her mind with the husband she knew, and
+was invigorated by the thought that a placable impenetrable giant may
+often be more pliable in a woman's hands than an irascible dwarf--until,
+perchance, the latter has been soundly cuffed, and then he is docile to
+trot like a squire, as near your heels as he can get.  She rejoiced to
+be working for the woman she had fallen in love with.
+
+Aminta promised herself to show the friend a livelier affection at their
+next meeting.
+
+A seventh letter, signed 'Adolphus,' came by post, was read and locked up
+in her jewel-box.  They were all nigh destruction for a wavering minute
+or so.  They were placed where they lay because the first of them had
+been laid there, the box being a strong one, under a patent key, and
+discovery would mean the terrible.  They had not been destroyed because
+they had, or seemed to her to have, the language of passion.  She could
+read them unmoved, and appease a wicked craving she owned to having, and
+reproached herself with having, for that language.
+
+Was she not colour in the sight of men?  Here was one, a mouthpiece of
+numbers, who vowed that homage was her due, and devotion, the pouring
+forth of the soul to her.  What was the reproach if she read the stuff
+unmoved?
+
+But peruse and reperuse it, and ask impressions to tell our deepest
+instinct of truthfulness whether language of this character can have been
+written to two women by one hand!  Men are cunning.  Can they catch a
+tone?  Not that tone!
+
+She, too, Mrs. Amy May, was colour in the sight of men.  Yet it seemed
+that he could not have written so to the Queen of Blondes.  And she, by
+repute, was as dangerous to slight as he to attract.  Her indifference
+exonerated him.  Besides, a Queen of Blondes would not draw the hearts
+out of men in England, as in Italy and in Spain.  Aminta had got thus far
+when she found 'Queen of Brunes' expunged by a mist: she imagined
+hearing the secretary's laugh.  She thought he was right to laugh at her.
+She retorted simply: 'These are feelings that are poetry.'
+
+A man may know nothing about them, and be an excellent schoolmaster.
+
+Suggestions touching the prudence of taking Mrs. Lawrence into her
+confidence, as regarded these troublesome letters of the man with the
+dart in his breast, were shuffled aside for various reasons: her modesty
+shrank; and a sense of honour toward the man forbade it.  She would have
+found it easier to do if she had conspired against her heart in doing it.
+And yet, cold-bloodedly to expose him and pluck the clothing from a
+passion--dear to think of only when it is profoundly secret--struck her
+as an extreme baseness, of which not even the woman who perused and
+reperused his letters could be guilty.
+
+Her head rang with some of the lines, and she accused her head of the
+crime of childishness, seeing that her heart was not an accomplice.  At
+the same time, her heart cried out violently against the business of a
+visit to Lady de Culme, and all the steps it involved.  Justly she
+accused her heart of treason.  Heart and head were severed.  This, as she
+partly apprehended, is the state of the woman who is already on the slope
+of her nature's mine-shaft, dreading the rush downwards, powerless to
+break away from the light.
+
+Letters perused and reperused, coming from a man never fervently noticed
+in person, conjure features one would wish to put beside the actual,
+to make sure that the fiery lines he writes are not practising a
+beguilement.  Aminta had lost grasp of the semblance of the impassioned
+man.  She just remembered enough of his eyes to think there might be
+healing in a sight of him.
+
+Latterly she had refused to be exhibited to a tattling world as the great
+nobleman's conquest:--The 'Beautiful Lady Doubtful' of a report that had
+scorched her cars.  Theatres, rides, pleasure-drives, even such houses as
+she saw standing open to her had been shunned.  Now she asked the earl to
+ride in the park.
+
+He complied, and sent to the stables immediately, just noted another of
+her veerings.  The whimsy creatures we are matched to contrast with,
+shift as the very winds or feather-grasses in the wind.  Possibly a fine
+day did it.  Possibly, too, her not being requested to do it.
+
+He was proud of her bearing on horseback.  She rode well and looked well.
+A finer weapon wherewith to strike at a churlish world was never given
+into the hands of man.  These English may see in her, if they like, that
+they and their laws and customs are defied.  It does her no hurt, and it
+hits them a ringing buffet.
+
+Among the cavaliers they passed was Mr. Morsfield.  He rode by slowly.
+The earl stiffened his back in returning the salute.  Both that and the
+gentleman were observed by Aminta.
+
+'He sees to having good blood under him,' said the earl.  'I admired his
+mount,' she replied.
+
+Interpreted by the fire of his writing, his features expressed character:
+insomuch that a woman could say of another woman, that she admired him
+and might reasonably do so.  His gaze at her in the presence of her lord
+was audacious.
+
+He had the defect of his virtue of courage.  Yet a man indisputably
+possessing courage cannot but have an interesting face--though one may
+continue saying, Pity that the eyes are not a little wider apart!  He
+dresses tastefully; the best English style.  A portrait by a master hand
+might hand him down to generations as an ancestor to be proud of.  But
+with passion and with courage, and a bent for snatching at the lion's
+own, does he not look foredoomed to an early close?  Her imagination
+called up a portrait of Elizabeth's Earl of Essex to set beside him; and
+without thinking that the two were fraternally alike, she sent him riding
+away with the face of the Earl of Essex and the shadow of the unhappy
+nobleman's grievous fortunes over his head.
+
+But it is inexcuseable to let the mind be occupied recurrently by a man
+who has not moved the feelings, wicked though it be to have the feelings
+moved by him.  Aminta rebuked her silly wits, and proceeded to speculate
+from an altitude, seeing the man's projects in a singularly definite
+minuteness, as if the crisis he invoked, the perils he braved, the mute
+participation he implored of her for the short space until their fate
+should be decided, were a story sharply cut on metal.  Several times she
+surprised herself in an interesting pursuit of the story; abominably
+cold, abominably interested.  She fell upon a review of small duties of
+the day, to get relief; and among them a device for spiriting away her
+aunt from the table where Mrs. Lawrence wished to meet Lord Ormont.  It
+sprang up to her call like an imp of the burning pit.  She saw it
+ingenious and of natural aspect.  I must be a born intriguer! she said in
+her breast.  That was hateful; but it seemed worse when she thought of a
+woman commanding the faculty and consenting to be duped and foiled.  That
+might be termed despicable; but what if she had not any longer the wish
+to gain her way with her lord?
+
+Those letters are acting like a kind of poison in me! her heart cried:
+and it was only her head that dwelt on the antidote.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A woman, and would therefore listen to nonsense
+And not be beaten by an acknowledged defeat
+Botched mendings will only make them worse
+Convincing themselves that they impersonate sagacity
+I have all the luxuries--enough to loathe them
+Lawyers hold the keys of the great world
+Naked original ideas, are acceptable at no time
+Not daring risk of office by offending the taxpayer
+This female talk of the eternities
+To know how to take a licking, that wins in the end
+To males, all ideas are female until they are made facts
+We cannot, men or woman, control the heart in sleep at night
+Who cries, Come on, and prays his gods you won't
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 3.
+
+XII.      MORE OF CUPER'S BOYS
+XIII.     WAR AT OLMER
+XIV.      OLD LOVERS NEW FRIENDS
+XV.       SHOWING A SECRET FISHED WITHOUT ANGLING
+XVI.      ALONG TWO ROADS TO STEIGNTON
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+MORE OF CUPER'S BOYS
+
+Entering the dining-room at the appointed minute in a punctual household,
+Mrs. Lawrence informed the company that she had seen a Horse Guards
+orderly at the trot up the street.  Weyburn said he was directing a boy
+to ring the bell of the house for him.  Lord Ormont went to the window.
+
+'Amends and honours?'  Mrs. Lawrence hummed and added an operatic
+flourish of an arm.  Something like it might really be imagined.  A large
+square missive was handed to the footman.  Thereupon the orderly trotted
+off.
+
+My lord took seat at table, telling the footman to lay 'that parcel'
+beside the clock on the mantelpiece.  Aminta and Mrs. Lawrence gave out a
+little cry of bird or mouse, pitiable to hear: they could not wait, they
+must know, they pished at sight of plates.  His look deferred to their
+good pleasure, like the dead hand of a clock under key; and Weyburn
+placed the missive before him, seeing by the superscription that it was
+not official.
+
+It was addressed, in the Roman hand of a boy's copybook writing, to
+
+          General the Earl of Ormont, I.C.B., etc.,
+                                   Horse Guards,
+                                             London.'
+
+The earl's eyebrows creased up over the address; they came down low on
+the contents.
+
+He resumed his daily countenance.  'Nothing of importance,' he said to
+the ladies.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence knocked the table with her knuckles.  Aminta put out a
+hand, in sign of her wish.
+
+'Pray let me see it.'
+
+'After lunch will do.'
+
+'No, no, no!  We are women--we are women,' cried Mrs. Lawrence.
+
+'How can it concern women?'
+
+'As well ask how a battle-field concerns them!'
+
+'Yes, the shots hit us behind you,' said Aminta; and she, too, struck the
+table.
+
+He did not prolong their torture.  Weyburn received the folio sheet and
+passed it on.  Aminta read.  Mrs. Lawrence jumped from her chair and ran
+to the countess's shoulder; her red lips formed the petitioning word to
+the earl for the liberty she was bent to take.
+
+'Peep?  if you like,' my lord said, jesting at the blank she would find,
+and soft to the pretty play of her mouth.
+
+When the ladies had run to the end of it, he asked them: 'Well; now
+then?'
+
+'But it's capital--the dear laddies!' Mrs. Lawrence exclaimed.
+
+Aminta's eyes met Weyburn's.
+
+She handed him the sheet of paper; upon the transmission of which empty
+thing from the Horse Guards my lord commented: 'An orderly!'
+
+Weyburn scanned it rapidly, for the table had been served.
+
+The contents were these:
+
+
+
+                    'HIGH BRENT NEAR ARTSWELL.
+                                             'April 7th.
+
+     'To GENERAL THE EARL OF ORMONT
+                         'Cavalry.
+
+     'May it please your Lordship, we, the boys of Mr. Cuper's school,
+     are desirous to bring to the notice of the bravest officer England
+     possesses now living, a Deed of Heroism by a little boy and girl,
+     children of our school laundress, aged respectively eight and six,
+     who, seeing a little fellow in the water out of depth, and sinking
+     twice, before the third time jumped in to save him, though unable to
+     swim themselves; the girl aged six first, we are sorry to say; but
+     the brother, Robert Coop, followed her example, and together they
+     made a line, and she caught hold of the drowning boy, and he held
+     her petycoats, and so they pulled.  We have seen the place: it is
+     not a nice one.  They got him ashore at last.  The park-keeper here
+     going along found them dripping, rubbing his hands, and blowing into
+     his nostrils.  Name, T. Shellen, son of a small cobbler here, and
+     recovered.
+
+     'May it please your Lordship, we make bold to apply, because you
+     have been for a number of years, as far as the oldest can recollect,
+     the Hero of our school, and we are so bold as to ask the favour of
+     General Lord Ormont's name to head a subscription we are making to
+     circulate for the support of their sick mother, who has fallen ill.
+     We think her a good woman.  Gentlemen and ladies of the
+     neighbourhood are willing to subscribe.  If we have a great name to
+     head the list, we think we shall make a good subscription.  Names:--
+
+               'Martha Mary Coop, mother.
+               'Robert Coop.
+               'Jane Coop, the girl, aged six.
+
+     'If we are not taking too great a liberty, a subscription paper will
+     follow.  We are sure General the Earl of Ormont's name will help to
+     make them comfortable.
+               'We are obediently and respectfully,
+                              'DAVID GOWEN,
+                              'WALTER BENCH,
+                              'JAMES PANNERS PARSONS,
+                              'And seven others.'
+
+Weyburn spared Aminta an answering look, that would have been a begging
+of Browny to remember Matey.
+
+'It 's genuine,' he said to Mrs. Lawrence, as he attacked his plate with
+the gusto for the repast previously and benignly observed by her.  'It
+ought to be the work of some of the younger fellows.'
+
+'They spell correctly, on the whole.'
+
+'Excepting,' said my lord, 'an article they don't know much about yet.'
+
+Weyburn had noticed the word, and he smiled.  'Said to be the happy
+state!  The three signing their names are probably what we called bellman
+and beemen, collector, and heads of the swarm-enthusiasts.  If it is not
+the work of some of the younger hands, the school has levelled on minors.
+In any case it shows the school is healthy.'
+
+'I subscribe,' said Mrs. Lawrence.
+
+'The little girl aged six shall have something done for her,' said
+Aminta, and turned her eyes on the earl.
+
+He was familiar with her thrilled voice at a story of bravery.  He said--
+
+'The boys don't say the girl's brother turned tail.'
+
+'Only that the girl's brother aged eight followed the lead of the little
+girl aged six,' Mrs. Lawrence remarked.  'Well, I like the schoolboys,
+too--"we are sorry to say!"  But they 're good lads.  Boys who can
+appreciate brave deeds are capable of doing them.'
+
+'Speak to me about it on Monday,' the earl said to Weyburn.
+
+He bowed, and replied--
+
+'I shall have the day to-morrow.  I 'll walk it and call on Messrs.' (he
+glanced at the paper) 'Gowen, Bench, and Parsons.  I have a German friend
+in London anxious to wear his legs down stumpier.'
+
+'The name of the school?'
+
+'It is called Cuper's.'
+
+Aminta, on hearing the name of Cuper a second time, congratulated herself
+on the happy invention of her pretext to keep Mrs. Pagnell from the table
+at midday.  Her aunt had a memory for names: what might she not have
+exclaimed!  There would have been little in it, but it was as well that
+the 'boy of the name of Weyburn' at Cuper's should be unmentioned.  By an
+exaggeration peculiar to a disgust in fancy, she could hear her aunt
+vociferating 'Weyburn!' and then staring at Mr. Weyburn opposite--perhaps
+not satisfied with staring.
+
+He withdrew after his usual hearty meal, during which his talk of boys
+and their monkey tricks, and what we can train them to, had been pleasant
+generally, especially to Mrs. Lawrence.  Aminta was carried back to the
+minute early years at High Brent.  A line or two of a smile touched her
+cheek.
+
+'Yes, my dear countess, that is the face I want for Lady de Culme
+to-day,' said Mrs. Lawrence.'  She likes a smiling face.  Aunty--aunty
+has always been good; she has never been prim.  I was too much for her,
+until I reflected that she was very old, and deserved to know the truth
+before she left us; and so I went to her; and then she said she wished to
+see the Countess of Ormont, because of her being my dearest friend.  I
+fancy she entertains an 'arriere' idea of proposing her flawless niece
+Gracey, Marchioness of Fencaster, to present you.  She 's quite equal to
+the fatigue herself.  You 'll rejoice in her anecdotes.  People were
+virtuous in past days: they counted their sinners.  In those days, too,
+as I have to understand, the men chivalrously bore the blame, though the
+women were rightly punished.  Now, alas!  the initiative is with the
+women, and men are not asked for chivalry.  Hence it languishes.  Lady
+de Culme won't hear of the Queen of Blondes; has forbidden her these many
+years!'
+
+Lord Ormont, to whom the lady's prattle was addressed, kept his visage
+moveless, except in slight jerks of the brows.
+
+'What queen?'
+
+'You insist upon renewing my old, old pangs of jealousy, my dear lord!
+The Queen of Cyprus, they called her, in the last generation; she fights
+our great duellist handsomely.'
+
+'My dear Mrs. Lawrence!'
+
+'He triumphs finally, we know, but she beats him every round.'
+
+'It 's only tattle that says the duel has begun.'
+
+'May is the month of everlasting beauty!  There 's a widower marquis now
+who claims the right to cast the glove to any who dispute it.'
+
+'Mrs. May is too good-looking to escape from scandal.'
+
+'Amy May has the good looks of the Immortals.'
+
+'She can't be thirty.'
+
+'In the calendar of women she counts thirty-four.'
+
+'Malignity!  Her husband's a lucky man.'
+
+'The shots have proved it.'
+
+Lord Ormont nodded his head over the hopeless task of defending a woman
+from a woman, and their sharp interchange ceased.  But the sight of his
+complacency in defeat told Aminta that he did not respect his fair
+client: it drew a sketch of the position he allotted his wife before the
+world side by side with this Mrs. Amy May, though a Lady de Culme was
+persuaded to draw distinctions.
+
+He had, however, quite complacently taken the dose intended for him by
+Mrs. Lawrence, who believed that the system of gently forcing him was the
+good one.
+
+The ladies drove away in the afternoon.  The earl turned his back on
+manuscript.  He sent for a couple of walking sticks, and commanded
+Weyburn to go through his parades.  He was no tyro, merely out of
+practice, and unacquainted with the later, simpler form of the great
+master of the French school, by which, at serious issues, the guarding of
+the line can be more quickly done: as, for instance, the 'parade de
+septime' supplanting the slower 'parade de prime;' the 'parade de quarte'
+having advantage over the 'parade de quince;' the 'parade de tierce'
+being readier and stronger than the 'parade de sixte;' the same said for
+the 'parade de seconde' instead of the weak 'parade d'octave.'
+
+These were then new points of instruction.  Weyburn demonstrated them as
+neatly as he could do with his weapon.
+
+'Yes, the French think,' Lord Ormont said, grasping the stick to get
+conviction of thumb-strength and finger-strength from the parades
+advocated; 'their steel would thread the ribs of our louts before: they
+could raise a cry of parry; so here they 're pleased to sneer at fencing,
+as if it served no purpose but the duel.  Fencing, for one thing, means,
+that with a good stick in his hand, a clever fencer can double up a giant
+or two, grant him choice of ground.  Some of our men box; but the sword's
+the weapon for an officer, and precious few of 'em are fit for more than
+to kick the scabbard.  Slashing comes easier to them: a plaguey cut, if
+it does cut--say, one in six.  Navy too.  Their cutlass-drill is like a
+woman's fling of the arm to fetch a slap from behind her shoulder.
+Pinking beats chopping.  These English 'll have their lesson.  It 's like
+what you call good writing: the simple way does the business, and that's
+the most difficult to learn, because you must give your head to it, as
+those French fellows do.  'Trop de finesse' is rather their fault.
+Anything's better than loutishness.  Well! the lesson 'll come.'
+
+He continued.  He spoke as he thought: he was not speaking what he was
+thinking.  His mind was directed on the visit of Aminta to Lady de Culme,
+and the tolerably wonderful twist whereby Mrs. Lawrence Finchley had
+vowed herself to his girl's interests.  And he blamed neither of them;
+only he could not understand how it had been effected, for Aminta and
+Mrs. Lawrence had not been on such particularly intimate terms last week
+or yesterday.  His ejaculation, 'Women!' was, as he knew, merely
+ignorance roaring behind a mask of sarcasm.  But it allied him with all
+previous generations on the male side, and that was its virtue.  His view
+of the shifty turns of women got no further, for the reason that he took
+small account of the operations of the feelings, to the sole exercise of
+which he by system condemned the sex.
+
+He was also insensibly half a grain more soured by the homage of those
+poor schoolboys, who called to him to take it for his reward in a country
+whose authorities had snubbed, whose Parliament had ignored, whose Press
+had abused him.  The ridiculous balance made him wilfully oblivious that
+he had seen his name of late eulogized in articles and in books for the
+right martial qualities.  Can a country treating a good soldier--not
+serving it for pay--in so scurvy a fashion, be struck too hard with our
+disdain?  One cannot tell it in too plain a language how one despises its
+laws, its moralities, its sham of society.  The Club, some choice
+anecdotists, two or three listeners to his dolences clothed as diatribes;
+a rubber, and the sight of his girl at home, composed, with a week's
+shooting now and then, his round of life now that she refused to travel.
+What a life for a soldier in his vigour.  Weyburn was honoured by the
+earl's company on the walk to Chiallo's.  In the street of elegant shops
+they met Lord Adderwood, and he, as usual, appeared in the act of
+strangling one of his flock of yawns, with gentlemanly consideration for
+the public.  Exercise was ever his temporary specific for these
+incurables.  Flinging off his coat, he cast away the cynic style
+engendering or engendered by them.  He and Weyburn were for a bout.  Sir
+John Randeller and Mr. Morsfield were at it, like Bull in training and
+desperado foiled.  A French 'maitre d'armes,' famed in 'escrime,'
+standing near Captain Chiallo, looked amused in the eyes, behind a mask
+of professional correctness.  He had come on an excursion for the display
+of his art.  Sir John's very sturdy defence was pierced.  Weyburn saluted
+the Frenchman as an acquaintance, and they shook hands, chatted,
+criticized, nodded.  Presently he and his adversary engaged, vizored and
+in their buckram, and he soon proved to be too strong for Adderwood, as
+the latter expected and had notified to Lord Ormont before they crossed
+the steel.  My lord had a pleasant pricking excitement in the sound.
+There was a pretty display between Weyburn and the 'escrimeur,' who
+neatly and kindly trifled, took a point and returned one, and at the
+finish complimented him.  The earl could see that he had to be
+sufficiently alert.
+
+Age mouthed an ugly word to the veteran insensible of it in his body,
+when a desire to be one with these pairs of nimble wrists and legs was
+like an old gamecock shown the pit and put back into the basket.  He left
+the place, carrying away an image of the coxcombical attitudinizing of
+the man Morsfield at the salut, upon which he brought down his powers of
+burlesque.
+
+My lord sketched the scene he had just quitted to a lady who had stopped
+her carriage.  She was the still beautiful Mrs. Amy May, wife of the
+famous fighting captain.  Her hair was radiant in a shady street; her
+eyelids tenderly toned round the almond enclosure of blue pebbles, bright
+as if shining from the seawash.  The lips of the fair woman could be seen
+to say that they were sweet when, laughing or discoursing, they gave
+sight of teeth proudly her own, rivalling the regularity of the grin of
+dentistry.  A Venus of nature was melting into a Venus of art, and there
+was a decorous concealment of the contest and the anguish in the process,
+for which Lord Ormont liked her well enough to wink benevolently at her
+efforts to cheat the world at various issues, and maintain her duel with
+Time.  The world deserved that she should beat it, even if she had been
+all deception.
+
+She let the subject of Mr. Morsfield pass without remark from her, until
+the exhaustion of open-air topics hinted an end of their conversation,
+and she said--
+
+'We shall learn next week what to think if the civilians.  I have heard
+Mr. Morsfield tell that he is 'de premiere force.'  Be on your guard.
+You are to know that I never forget a service, and you did me one once.'
+'You have reason .  .  . ?' said the earl.
+
+'If anybody is the dragon to the treasure he covets he is a spadassin who
+won't hesitate at provocations.  Adieu.'
+
+Lord Ormont's eye had been on Mr. Morsfield.  He had seen what Mrs.
+Pagnell counselled her niece to let, him see.  He thanked Mr. Morsfield
+for a tonic that made him young with anticipations of bracing; and he set
+his head to work upon an advance half-way to meet the gentleman, and
+safely exclude his wife's name.
+
+Monday brought an account of Cuper's boys.  Aminta received it while the
+earl was at his papers for the morning's news of the weightier deeds of
+men.
+
+They were the right boys, Weyburn said; his interview with Gowen, Bench,
+Parsons, and the others assured him that the school was breathing big
+lungs.  Mr. Cuper, too, had spoken well of them.
+
+'You walked the twenty miles?'  Aminta interrupted him.
+
+'With my German friend: out and home: plenty of time in the day.  He has
+taken to English boys, but asks why enthusiasm and worship of great deeds
+don't grow upward from them to their elders.  And I, in turn, ask why
+Germans insist on that point more even than the French do.'
+
+'Germans are sentimental.  But the English boys he saw belonged to a
+school with traditions of enthusiasm sown by some one.  The school
+remembered?'
+
+'Curiously, Mr. Cuper tells me, the hero of the school has dropped and
+sprung up, stout as ever, twice--it tells me what I wish to believe--
+since Lord Ormont led their young heads to glory.  He can't say how it
+comes. The tradition's there, and it 's kindled by some flying spark.'
+
+'They remember who taught the school to think of Lord Ormont?'
+
+'I 'm a minor personage.  I certainly did some good, and that 's a push
+forward.'
+
+'They speak of you?'
+
+It was Aminta more than the Countess of Ormont speaking to him.
+
+'You take an interest in the boys,' he said, glowing.  'Yes, well, they
+have their talks.  I happened to be a cricketer, counting wickets and
+scores.  I don't fancy it's remembered that it was I preached my lord.
+A day of nine wickets and one catch doesn't die out of a school.  The
+boy Gowen was the prime spirit in getting up the subscription for the
+laundress.  But Bench and Parsons are good boys, too.'
+
+He described them, dwelt on them.  The enthusiast, when not lyrical, is
+perilously near to boring.  Aminta was glad of Mrs. Lawrence's absence.
+She had that feeling because Matthew Weyburn would shun talk of himself
+to her, not from a personal sense of tedium in hearing of the boys; and
+she was quaintly reminded by suggestions, coming she knew not whence, of
+a dim likeness between her and these boys of the school when their hero
+dropped to nothing and sprang up again brilliantly--a kind of distant
+cousinship, in her susceptibility to be kindled by so small a flying
+spark as this one on its travels out of High Brent.  Moreover, the dear
+boys tied her to her girlhood, and netted her fleeting youth for the
+moth-box.  She pressed to hear more and more of them, and of the school-
+laundress Weyburn had called to see, and particularly of the child,
+little Jane, aged six.  Weyburn went to look at the sheet of water to
+which little Jane had given celebrity over the county.  The girl stood
+up to her shoulders when she slid off the bank and made the line for her
+brother to hold, he in the water as well.  Altogether, Cuper's boys were
+justified in promoting a subscription, the mother being helpless.
+
+'Modest little woman,' he said of Jane.  'We'll hope people won't spoil
+her.  Don't forget, Lady Ormont, that the brother did his part; he had
+more knowledge of the danger than she.'
+
+'You will undertake to convey our subscriptions?  Lord Ormont spoke of
+the little ones and the schoolboys yesterday.'
+
+'I'll be down again among them next Sunday, Lady Ormont.  On the Monday
+I go to Olmer.'
+
+'The girls of High Brent subscribe?'
+
+There was a ripple under Weyburn's gravity.
+
+'Messrs. Gowen, Bench, and Parsons thought proper to stop Miss Vincent at
+the head of her detachment in the park.'
+
+'On the Sunday?'
+
+'And one of them handed her a paper containing a report of their
+interview with Mrs. Coop and a neat eulogy of little Jane.  But don't
+suspect them, I beg.  I believe them to be good, honest fellows.  Bench,
+they say, is religious; Gowen has written verses; Parsons generally
+harum-scarum.  They're boyish in one way or another, and that'll do.
+The cricket of the school has been low: seems to be reviving.'
+
+'Mr. Weyburn,' said the countess, after a short delay--and Aminta broke
+through--'it pleases me to hear of them, and think they have not
+forgotten you, or, at least, they follow the lead you gave.  I should
+like to know whether an idea I have is true: Is much, I mean constant,
+looking down on young people likely to pull one's mind down to their
+level?'
+
+'Likely enough to betray our level, if there 's danger,' he murmured.
+'Society offers an example that your conjecture is not unfounded, Lady
+Ormont.  But if we have great literature and an interest in the world's
+affairs, can there be any fear of it?  The schoolmaster ploughs to make a
+richer world, I hope.  He must live with them, join with them in their
+games, accustom them to have their heads knocked with what he wants to
+get into them, leading them all the while, as the bigger schoolfellow
+does, if he is a good fellow.  He has to be careful not to smell of his
+office.  Doing positive good is the business of his every day--on a small
+scale, but it 's positive, if he likes his boys.  'Avaunt favouritism!'
+he must like all boys.  And it 's human nature not so far removed from
+the dog; only it's a supple human nature: there 's the beauty of it.  We
+train it.  Nothing is more certain than that it will grow upward.  I have
+the belief that I shall succeed, because I like boys, and they like me.
+It always was the case.'
+
+'I know,' said Aminta.
+
+Their eyes met.  She looked moved at heart behind that deep forest of her
+chestnut eyes.
+
+'And I think I can inspire confidence in fathers and mothers,' he
+resumed.'  I have my boys already waiting for me to found the school.
+I was pleased the other day: an English friend brought an Italian
+gentleman to see me and discuss my system, up at Norwood, at my mother's
+--a Signor Calliani.  He has a nephew; the parents dote on him.  The
+uncle confesses that the boy wants--he has got hold of our word--"pluck."
+We had a talk.  He has promised to send me the lad when I am established
+in Switzerland.'
+
+'When?' said Aminta.
+
+'A relative from whom a Reversion comes is near the end.  It won't be
+later than September that I shall go.  My Swiss friend has the school,
+and would take me at once before he retires.'
+
+'You make friends wherever you go,' said Aminta.
+
+'Why shouldn't everybody?  I'm convinced it's because I show people I
+mean well, and I never nurse an injury, great or small.  And besides,
+they see I look forward.  I do hope good for the world.  If at my school
+we have all nationalities--French boys and German, Italian, Russian,
+Spaniard--without distinction of race and religion and station, and with
+English intermixing--English games, English sense of honour and
+conception of gentleman--we shall help to nationalize Europe.  Emile
+Grenat, Adolf Fleischer, and an Italian, Vincentino Chiuse, are prepared
+to start with me: and they are men of attainments; they will throw up
+their positions; they will do me the honour to trust to my leadership.
+It's not scaling Alps or commanding armies, true.'
+
+'It may be better,' said Aminta, and thought as she spoke.
+
+'Slow work, if we have a taste for the work, doesn't dispirit.
+Otherwise, one may say that an African or South American traveller has a
+more exciting time.  I shall manage to keep my head on its travels.'
+
+'You have ideas about the education of girls?'
+
+'They can't be carried out unaided.'
+
+'Aid will come.'
+
+Weyburn's confidence, high though it was, had not mounted to that pitch.
+
+'One may find a mate,' he said.  The woman to share and practically to
+aid in developing such ideas is not easily found: that he left as
+implied.
+
+Aminta was in need of poetry; but the young schoolmaster's plain, well-
+directed prose of the view of a business in life was welcome to her.
+
+Lord Ormont entered the room.  She reminded him of the boys of High Brent
+and the heroine Jane.  He was ready to subscribe his five-and-twenty
+guineas, he said.  The amount of the sum gratified Weyburn, she could
+see.  She was proud of her lord, and of the boys and the little girl;
+and she would have been happy to make the ardent young schoolmaster aware
+of her growing interest in the young.
+
+The night before the earl's departure on the solitary expedition to which
+she condemned him, he surprised her with a visit of farewell, so that he
+need not disturb her in the early morning, he said.  She was reading
+beside her open jewel-box, and she closed it with the delicate touch of a
+hand turned backward while listening to him, with no sign of nervousness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WAR AT OLMER
+
+Lively doings were on the leap to animate Weyburn at Olmer during Easter
+week.  The Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey, rector of Barborough, on hearing that
+Lady Charlotte Eglett was engaged in knocking at the doors of litigation
+with certain acts that constituted distinct breaches of the law and the
+peace, and were a violation of the rights of her neighbour, Mr. Gilbert
+Addicote, might hope that the troublesome parishioner whom he did not
+often number among his congregation would grant him a term of repose.
+Therein he was deceived.  Alterations and enlargements of the church,
+much required, had necessitated the bricking up of a door regarded by the
+lady as the private entrance to the Olmer pew.  She sent him notice of
+her intention to batter at the new brickwork; so there was the prospect
+of a pew-fight before him.  But now she came to sit under him every
+Sunday; and he could have wished her absent; for she diverted his
+thoughts from piety to the selections of texts applicable in the case of
+a woman who sat with arms knotted, and the frown of an intemperate
+schoolgirl forbidden speech; while her pew's firelight startlingly at
+intervals danced her sinister person into view, as from below.  The
+lady's inaccessible and unconquerable obtuseness to exhortation informed
+the picture with an evil spirit that cried for wrestlings.
+
+Regularly every week-day she headed the war now rageing between Olmer and
+Addicotes, on the borders of the estates.  It was open war, and herself
+to head the cavalry.  Weyburn, driving up a lane in the gig she had sent
+to meet the coach, beheld a thicket of countrymen and boys along a ridge;
+and it swayed and broke, and through it burst the figure of a mounted
+warrior woman at the gallop, followed by what bore an appearance of horse
+and gun, minus carriage, drivers at the flanks cracking whips on foot.
+Off went the train, across a small gorse common, through a gate.
+
+'That's another down,' said his whip.  'Sound good wood it is, not made
+to fall.  Her ladyship's at it hard to-day.  She 'll teach Mr. Addicote
+a thing or two about things females can do.  That is, when they stand
+for their rights.'
+
+He explained to Weyburn that Mr. Addicote, a yeoman farmer and a good
+hunting man, but a rare obstinate one, now learning his lesson from her
+ladyship, was in dispute with her over rights of property on a stretch of
+fir-trees lining the ridge where the estates of Olmer and Addicotes met.
+Her ladyship had sworn that if he did not yield to her claim she would
+cut down every tree of the ridge and sell the lot for timber under his
+nose.  She acted according to her oath, in the teeth of his men two feet
+across the border.  All the world knew the roots of those trees were for
+the most part in Olmer soil, though Addicote shared the shade.  All the
+people about mourned for the felling of those trees.  All blamed Mr.
+Gilbert Addicote for provoking her ladyship, good hunting man though he
+was.  But as to the merits of the question, under the magnifier of the
+gentlemen of the law, there were as many different opinions as wigs in
+the land.
+
+'And your opinion?' said Weyburn.
+
+To which the young groom answered: 'Oh, I don't form an opinion, sir.
+I 'm of my mistress's opinion; and if she says, Do it, think as we like,
+done it has to be.'
+
+Lady Charlotte came at a trot through the gate, to supervise the
+limbering-up of another felled tree.  She headed it as before.  The log
+dragged bounding and twirling, rattling its chains; the crowd along the
+ridge, forbidden to cheer, watching it with intense repression of the
+roar.  We have not often in England sight of a great lady challengeing an
+unpopular man to battle and smacking him in the face like this to provoke
+him.  Weyburn was driven on a half-circle of the lane to the gate, where
+he jumped out to greet Lady Charlotte trotting back for another smack in
+the face of her enemy,--a third rounding of her Troy with the vanquished
+dead at her heels, as Weyburn let a flimsy suggestion beguile his fancy,
+until the Homeric was overwhelming even to a playful mind, and he put
+her in a mediaeval frame.  She really had the heroical aspect in a
+grandiose-grotesque, fitted to some lines of Ariosto.  Her head wore
+a close hood, disclosing a fringe of grey locks, owlish to see about
+features hooked for action.
+
+'Ah, you!  there you are: good--I'll join you in three minutes,' she sang
+out to him, and cantered to the ridge.
+
+Hardly beyond the stated number she was beside him again, ranging her
+steed for the victim log to dance a gyration on its branches across the
+lane and enter a field among the fallen compeers.  One of her men had run
+behind her.  She slid from her saddle and tossed him the reins, catching
+up her skirts.
+
+'That means war, as much as they'll have it in England,' she said, seeing
+his glance at the logs.  'My husband's wise enough to leave it to me, so
+I save him trouble with neighbours.  An ass of a Mr. Gilbert Addicote
+dares us to make good our claim on our property, our timber, because half
+a score of fir-tree roots go stretching on to his ground.'
+
+She swished her whip.  Mr. Gilbert Addicote received the stroke and
+retired, a buried subject.  They walked on at an even pace.  'You 'll see
+Leo to-morrow.  He worships you.  You may as well give him a couple of
+hours' coaching a day for the week.  He'll be hanging about you, and you
+won't escape him.  Well, and my brother Rowsley: how is Lord Ormont?
+He never comes to me now, since--Well, it 's nothing to me; but I like
+to see my brother.  She can't make any change here.  Olmer and Lady
+Charlotte 's bosom were both implied.  'What do you think?--you 've
+noticed: is he in good health?  It 's the last thing he 'll be got to
+speak of.'
+
+Weyburn gave the proper assurances.
+
+'Not he!' said she.  'He's never ill.  Men beat women in the long race,
+if they haven't overdone it when young.  My doctor wants me to renounce
+the saddle.  He says it 's time.  Not if I 've got work for horseback!'
+she nicked her head emphatically: 'I hate old age.  They sha'nt dismount
+me till a blow comes.  Hate it!  But I should despise myself if I showed
+signs, like a worm under heel.  Let Nature do her worst; she can't
+conquer us as long as we keep up heart.  You won't have to think of that
+for a good time yet.  Now tell me why Lord Ormont didn't publish the
+"Plan for the Defence" you said he was writing; and he was, I know.  He
+wrote it and he finished it; you made the fair copy.  Well, and he read
+it,--there! see!'  She took the invisible sheets in her hands and tore
+them.  'That's my brother.  He's so proud.  It would have looked like
+asking the country, that injured him, to forgive him.  I wish it had been
+printed.  But whatever he does I admire.  That--she might have advised,
+if she 'd been a woman of public spirit or cared for his reputation.  He
+never comes near me.  Did she read your copy?'
+
+The question was meant for an answer.
+
+Weyburn replied: 'Lady Ormont had no sight of it.'
+
+'Ah! she's Lady Ormont to the servants, I know.  She has an aunt living
+in the house.  If my brother's a sinner, and there's punishment for him,
+he has it from that aunt.  Pag .  .  .  something.  He bears with her.
+He 's a Spartan.  She 's his pack on his back, for what she covers and
+the game he plays.  It looks just tolerably decent with her in the house.
+She goes gabbling a story about our Embassy at Madrid.  To preserve
+propriety, as they call it. Her niece doesn't stoop to any of those
+tricks, I 'm told.  I like her for that.'
+
+Weyburn was roused: 'I think you would like Lady Ormont, if you knew her,
+my lady.'
+
+'The chances of my liking the young woman are not in the dice-box.  You
+call her Lady Ormont: you are not one of the servants.  Don't call her
+Lady Ormont to me.'
+
+'It is her title, Lady Charlotte.'  She let fly a broadside at him.
+
+'You are one of the woman's dupes.  I thought you had brains.  How can
+you be the donkey not to see that my brother Rowsley, Lord Ormont, would
+never let a woman, lawfully bearing his name, go running the quadrille
+over London in couples with a Lady Staines and a Mrs. Lawrence Finchley,
+Lord Adderwood, and that man Morsfield, who boasts of your Lady Ormont,
+and does it unwhipped---tell me why?  Pooh, you must be the poorest fool
+born to suppose it possible my brother would allow a man like that man
+Morsfield to take his wife's name in his mouth a second time.  Have you
+talked much with this young person?'
+
+'With Lady Ormont?  I have had the honour occasionally.'
+
+'Stick to the title and write yourself plush-breech.  Can't you be more
+than a footman?  Try to be a man of the world; you're old enough for that
+by now.  I know she 's good-looking; the whole tale hangs on that.  You
+needn't be singing me mooncalf hymn tunes of "Lady Ormont, Lady Ormont,"
+solemn as a parson's clerk; the young woman brought good looks to market;
+and she got the exchange she had a right to expect.  But it 's not my
+brother Rowsley's title she has got--except for footmen and tradesmen.
+When there's a true Countess of Ormont!..... Unless my brother has cut
+himself from his family.  Not he.  He's not mad.'
+
+They passed through Olmer park-gates.  Lady Charlotte preceded him, and
+she turned, waiting for him to rejoin her.  He had taken his flagellation
+in the right style, neither abashed nor at sham crow: he was easy, ready
+to converse on any topic; he kept the line between supple courtier and
+sturdy independent; and he was a pleasant figure of a young fellow.
+Thinking which, a reminder that she liked him drew her by the road of
+personal feeling, as usual with her, to reflect upon another, and a
+younger, woman's observing and necessarily liking him too.
+
+'You say you fancy I should like the person you call Lady Ormont?'
+
+'I believe you would, my lady.'
+
+'Are her manners agreeable?'
+
+'Perfect; no pretension.'
+
+'Ah!  she sings, plays--all that?
+
+'She plays the harp and sings.'
+
+'You have heard her?'
+
+'Twice.'
+
+'She didn't set you mewing?'
+
+'I don't remember the impulse; at all events, it was restrained.'
+
+'She would me; but I'm an old woman.  I detest their squalling and
+strumming.  I can stand it with Italians on the boards: they don't, stop
+conversation.  She was present at that fencing match where you plucked a
+laurel?  I had an account of it.  I can't see the use of fencing in this
+country.  Younger women can, I dare say.  Now, look.  If we're to speak
+of her, I can't call her Lady Ormont, and I don't want to hear you.  Give
+me her Christian name.'
+
+
+'It is'--Weyburn found himself on a slope without a stay--'Aminta.'
+
+Lady Charlotte's eye was on him.  He felt intolerably hot; his vexation
+at the betrayal of the senseless feeling made it worse, a conscious
+crimson.
+
+'Aminta,' said she, rather in the style of Cuper's boys, when the name
+was a strange one to them.  'I remember my Italian master reading out a
+poem when I was a girl.  I read poetry then.  You wouldn't have imagined
+that.  I did, and liked it.  I hate old age.  It changes you so.  None of
+my children know me as I was when I had life in me and was myself, and my
+brother Rowsley called me Cooey.  They think me a hard old woman.  I was
+Cooey through the woods and over the meadows and down stream to Rowsley.
+Old age is a prison wall between us and young people.  They see a
+miniature head and bust, and think it a flattery--won't believe it.
+After I married I came to understand that the world we are in is a world
+to fight in, or under we go.  But I pity the young who have to cast
+themselves off and take up arms.  Young women above all.'
+
+Why had she no pity for Aminta?  Weyburn asked it of his feelings, and he
+had the customary insurgent reply from them.
+
+'You haven't seen Steignton yet,' she continued.  'No place on earth is
+equal to Steignton for me.  It 's got the charm.  Here at Olmer I'm a
+mother and a grandmother--the "devil of an old-woman" my neighbours take
+me to be.  She hasn't been to Steignton, either.  No, and won't go there,
+though she's working her way round, she supposes.  He'll do everything
+for his "Aminta," but he won't take her to Steignton.  I'm told now she's
+won Lady de Culme.  That Mrs. Lawrence Finclhley has dropped the curtsey
+to her great-aunt and sworn to be a good girl, for a change, if Lady de
+Culme will do the chaperon, and force Lord Ormont's hand.  My brother
+shrugs.  There'll be a nice explosion one day soon.  Presented?  The
+Court won't have her.  That I know for positive.  If she's pushed
+forward, she 'll be bitterly snubbed.  It 's on the heads of those women
+--silly women!  I can't see the game Mrs. Lawrence Finchley's playing.
+She'd play for fun.  If they'd come to me, I 'd tell them I 've proof
+she 's not the Countess of Ormont: positive proof. You look?  I have it.
+I hold something; and not before,--(he may take his Aminta to Steignton,
+he may let her be presented, she may wear his name publicly, I say he's
+laughing at them, snapping his fingers at them louder and louder the more
+they seem to be pushing him into a corner, until--I know my brother
+Rowsley!--and, poor dear fellow! a man like that, the best cavalry
+general England ever had:--they'll remember it when there comes a cry
+for a general from India: that's the way with the English; only their
+necessities teach them to be just!)--he to be reduced to be out-
+manoeuvring a swarm of women,--I tell them, not before my brother Rowsley
+comes to me for what he handed to my care and I keep safe for him, will
+I believe he has made or means to make his Aminta Countess of Ormont.'
+
+They were at the steps of the house.  Turning to Weyburn there, the
+inexhaustible Lady Charlotte remarked that their conversation had given
+her pleasure.  Leo was hanging on to one of his hands the next minute.  A
+small girl took the other.  Philippa and Beatrice were banished damsels.
+
+Lady Charlotte's breath had withered the aspect of Aminta's fortunes.
+Weyburn could forgive her, for he was beginning to understand her.  He
+could not pardon 'her brother Rowsley,' who loomed in his mind
+incomprehensible, and therefore black.  Once he had thought the great
+General a great man.  He now regarded him as a mere soldier, a soured
+veteran; socially as a masker and a trifler, virtually a callous angler
+playing his cleverly-hooked fish for pastime.
+
+What could be the meaning of Lady Charlotte's 'that, man Morsfield, who
+boasts of your Lady Ormont, and does it unwhipped'?
+
+Weyburn stopped his questioning, with the reflection that he had no right
+to recollect her words thus accurately.  The words, however, stamped
+Morsfield's doings and sayings and postures in the presence of Aminta
+with significance.  When the ladies were looking on at the fencers,
+Morsfield's perfect coxcombry had been noticeable.  He knew the art of
+airing a fine figure.  Mrs. Lawrence Finchley had spoken of it, and
+Aminta had acquiesced; in the gravely simple manner of women who may be
+thinking of it much more intently than the vivacious prattler.  Aminta
+confessed to an admiration of masculine physical beauty; the picador,
+matador, of the Spanish ring called up an undisguised glow that English
+ladies show coldly when they condescend to let it be seen; as it were, a
+line or two of colour on the wintriest of skies.  She might, after all,
+at heart be one of the leisured, jewelled, pretty-winged; the spending,
+never harvesting, world she claimed and sought to enter.  And what a
+primitive world it was!--world of the glittering beast and the not too
+swiftly flying prey, the savage passions clothed in silk.  Surely desire
+to belong to it writes us poor creatures.  Mentally, she could hardly be
+maturer than the hero-worshipping girl in the procession of Miss
+Vincent's young seminarists.  Probably so, but she carried magic.  She
+was of the order of women who walk as the goddesses of old, bearing the
+gift divine.  And, by the way, she had the step of the goddess.  Weyburn
+repeated to himself the favourite familiar line expressive of the
+glorious walk, and accused Lord Ormont of being in cacophonous accordance
+with the perpetual wrong of circumstance, he her possessor, the sole
+person of her sphere insensible to the magic she bore!  So ran his
+thought.
+
+The young man chose to conceive that he thought abstractedly.  He was,
+in truth, often casting about for the chances of his meeting on some
+fortunate day the predestined schoolmaster's wife: a lady altogether
+praiseworthy for carrying principles of sound government instead of
+magic.  Consequently, susceptible to woman's graces though he knew
+himself to be, Lady Ormont's share of them hung in the abstract for him.
+His hopes were bent on an early escape to Switzerland and his life's
+work.
+
+Lady Charlotte mounted to ride to the battle daily.  She talked of
+her brother Rowsley, and of 'Aminta,' and provoked an advocacy of the
+Countess of Ormont, and trampled the pleas and defences to dust, much in
+the same tone as on the first day; sometimes showing a peep of sweet
+humaneness, like the ripe berry of a bramble, and at others rattling
+thunder at the wretch of a woman audacious enough to pretend to a part
+in her brother's title.
+
+Not that she had veneration for titles.  She considered them a tinsel,
+and the devotee on his knee-caps to them a lump for a kick.  Adding:
+'Of course I stand for my class; and if we can't have a manlier people--
+and it 's not likely in a country treating my brother so badly--well,
+then, let things go on as they are.'  But it was the pretension to a part
+in the name of Ormont which so violently offended the democratic
+aristocrat, and caused her to resent it as an assault on the family
+honour, by 'a woman springing up out of nothing'--a woman of no
+distinctive birth.
+
+She was rational in her fashion; or Weyburn could at least see where and
+how the reason in her took a twist.  The Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey would not
+see it; he was, in charity to her ladyship, of a totally contrary
+opinion, he informed Weyburn.  The laborious pastor and much-enduring
+Churchman met my lady's apologist as he was having a swing of the legs
+down the lanes before breakfast, and he fell upon a series of complaints,
+which were introduced by a declaration that 'he much feared' her ladyship
+would have a heavy legal bill to pay for taking the law into her hands up
+at Addicotes.
+
+Her ladyship might, if she pleased, he said, encourage her domestics and
+her husband's tenants and farm-labourers to abandon the church for the
+chapel, and go, as she had done and threatened to do habitually, to the
+chapel herself; but to denounce the ritual of the Orthodox Church under
+the denomination of 'barbarous,' to say of the invoking supplications of
+the service, that they were--she had been heard to state it more or less
+publicly and repeatedly--suitable to abject ministers and throngs at the
+court of an Indian rajah, that he did not hesitate to term highly
+unbecoming in a lady of her station, subversive and unchristian.  The
+personal burdens inflicted on him by her ladyship he prayed for patience
+to endure.  He surprised Weyburn in speaking of Lady Charlotte as
+'educated and accomplished.'  She was rather more so than Weyburn knew,
+and more so than was common among the great ladies of her time.
+
+Weyburn strongly advised the reverend gentleman on having it out with
+Lady Charlotte in a personal interview.  He sketched the great lady's
+combative character on a foundation of benevolence, and stressed her
+tolerance for open dealing, and the advantage gained by personal dealings
+with her--after a mauling or two.  His language and his illustrations
+touched an old-school chord in the Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey, who hummed over
+the project, profoundly disrelishing the introductory portion.
+
+'Do me the honour to call and see me to-morrow, after breakfast, before
+her ladyship starts for the fray on Addicote heights,' Weyburn said; 'and
+I will ask your permission to stand by you.  Her bark is terrific, we
+know; and she can bite, but there's no venom.'
+
+Finally, on a heave of his chest, Mr. Hampton-Evey consented to call, in
+the interests of peace.
+
+Weyburn had said it must be 'man to man with her, facing her and taking
+steps'; and, although the prospect was unpleasant to repulsiveness, it
+was a cheerful alternative beside Mr. Hampton-Evey's experiences and
+anticipations of the malignant black power her ladyship could be when she
+was not faced.
+
+'Let the man come,' said Lady Charlotte.  Her shoulders intimated
+readiness for him.
+
+She told Weyburn he might be present--insisted to have him present.
+During the day Weyburn managed to slide in observations on the favourable
+reports of Mr. Hampton-Evey's work among the poor--emollient doses that
+irritated her to fret and paw, as at a checking of her onset.
+
+In the afternoon the last disputed tree on the Addicotes' ridge was
+felled and laid on Olmer ground.  Riding with Weyburn and the joyful Leo,
+she encountered Mr. Eglett and called out the news.  He remarked, in the
+tone of philosophy proper to a placable country gentleman obedient to
+government on foreign affairs: 'Now for the next act.  But no more
+horseback now, mind!'
+
+She muttered of not recollecting a promise.  He repeated the interdict.
+Weyburn could fancy seeing her lips form words of how she hated old age.
+
+He had been four days at Olmer, always facing her, 'man to man,' in the
+matter of Lady Ormont, not making way at all, but holding firm, and
+winning respectful treatment.  They sat alone in her private room, where,
+without prelude, she discharged a fiery squib at impudent hussies caught
+up to the saddle-bow of a hero for just a canter, and pretending to a
+permanent seat beside him.
+
+'You have only to see Lady Ormont; you will admit the justice of her
+claim, my lady,' said he; and as evidently he wanted a fight, she let him
+have it.
+
+'You try to provoke me; you take liberties.  You may call the woman
+Aminta, I've told you; you insult me when you call the woman by my family
+name.'
+
+'Pardon me, my lady: I have no right to call Lady Ormont Aminta.'
+
+'You've never done so, eh?  Say!'
+
+She had him at the edge of the precipice.  He escaped by saying, 'Her
+Christian name was asked the other day, and I mentioned it.  She is
+addressed by me as Lady Ormont.'
+
+'And by her groom and her footman.  They all do; it 's the indemnity to
+that class of young woman.  Her linendraper is Lady-Ormonting as you do.
+I took you for a gentleman.  Let me hear you give her that title again,
+you shall hear her true one, that the world fits her with, from me.'
+
+The time was near the half-hour bell before dinner, the situation between
+them that of the fall of the breath to fetch words electrical.  She left
+it to him to begin the fight, and was not sorry that she had pricked him
+for it.
+
+A footman entered the room, bearer of a missive for Mr. Weyburn.  Lord
+Ormont's groom had brought it from London.
+
+'Send in the man,' said Lady Charlotte.
+
+Weyburn read
+
+'The Countess of Ormont begs Mr. Weyburn to return instantly.  There has
+been an accident in his home.  It may not be very serious.  An arm--a
+shock to the system from a fall.  Messenger informs her, fear of internal
+hemorrhage.  Best doctors in attendance.'
+
+He handed Lady Charlotte the letter.  She humped at the first line,
+flashed across the remainder, and in a lowered voice asked--
+
+'Sister in the house?'
+
+'My mother,' Weyburn said.
+
+The groom appeared.  He knew nothing.  The Countess had given him orders
+to spare no expense on the road to Olmer, without a minute's delay.  He
+had ridden and driven.
+
+He looked worn.  Lady Charlotte rang the bell for her butler.  To him she
+said--
+
+'See that this man has a good feed of meat, any pastry you have, and a
+bottle of port wine.  He has earned a pipe of tobacco; make up a bed for
+him.  Despatch at once any one of the stable-boys to Loughton--the
+Dolphin.  Mr. Leeman there will have a chariot, fly, gig, anything,
+ready-horsed in three hours from now.  See Empson yourself; he will put
+my stepper Mab to the light trap; no delay.  Have his feed at Loughton.
+Tell Mrs. Maples to send up now, here, a tray, whatever she has, within
+five minutes--not later.  A bottle of the Peace of Amiens Chambertin--
+Mr. Eglett's.  You understand.  Mrs. Maples will pack a basket for the
+journey; she will judge.  Add a bottle of the Waterloo Bordeaux.  Wait:
+a dozen of Mr. Eglett's cigars.  Brisk with all the orders.  Go.'
+
+She turned to Weyburn.  'You pack your portmanteau faster than a servant
+will do it.'
+
+He ran up-stairs.
+
+She was beside the tray to welcome and inspirit his eating, and she
+performed the busy butler's duty in pouring out wine for him.  It was a
+toned old Burgundy, happy in the year of its birth, the grandest of
+instruments to roll the gambol-march of the Dionysiaca through the blood
+of this frame and sound it to the spirit.  She spoke no word of his cause
+for departure.  He drank, and he felt what earth can do to cheer one of
+her stricken children and strengthen the beat of a heart with a dread
+like a shot in it.
+
+She, while he flew supporting the body of his most beloved to the sun of
+Life in brighter hope, reckoned the stages of his journey.
+
+'Leeman at Loughton will post you through the night to Mersley.  Wherever
+you bait, it is made known that you come from Olmer, and are one of us.
+That passes you on up to London.  Where can Lord Ormont be now?'
+
+'In Paris.'
+
+'Still in Paris?  He leaves her.  She did well to send as she did.  You
+will not pay for the posting along the road.'
+
+'I will pay for myself--I have a 'purse,' Weyburn said; and continued,
+'Oh, my lady; there is Mr. Hampton-Evey to-morrow morning: I promised to
+stand by him.'
+
+'I'll explain,' said Lady Charlotte.  'He shall not miss you.  If he
+strips the parson and comes as a man and a servant of the poor, he has
+nothing to fear.  You've done?  The night before my brother Rowsley's
+first duel I sat with him at supper and poured his wine out, and knew
+what was going to happen, didn't say a word.  No use in talking about
+feelings.  Besides, death is only the other side of the ditch, and one or
+other of us must go foremost.  Now then, good-bye.  Empson's waiting by
+this time.  Mr. Eglett and Leo shall hear the excuses from me.  Think of
+anything you may want, while I count ten.'
+
+She held his hand.  He wanted her to be friendly to Lady Ormont, but
+could not vex her at the last moment, touched as he was by her practical
+kindness.
+
+She pressed his hand and let it go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+OLD LOVERS NEW FRIENDS
+
+The cottage inhabited by Weyburn's mother was on the southern hills over
+London.  He reached it late in the afternoon.  His mother's old servant,
+Martha, spied the roadway at the gate of the small square of garden.  Her
+steady look without welcome told him the scene he would meet beyond the
+door, and was the dead in her eyes.  He dropped from no height; he stood
+on a level with the blow.  His apprehensions on the road had lowered him
+to meet it.
+
+'Too late, Martha?'
+
+'She's in heaven, my dear.'
+
+'She is lying alone?'
+
+'The London doctor left half an hour back.  She's gone.  Slipped, and
+fell, coming from her room, all the way down.  She prayed for grace to
+see her son.  She 'll watch over him, be sure.  You 'll not find it lone
+and cold.  A lady sits with it--Lady Ormont, they call her--a very kind
+lady.  My mistress liked her voice.  Ever since news of the accident, up
+to ten at night; and never eats or drinks more than a poor tiny bit of
+bread-and-butter, with a teacup.'
+
+'Weyburn went up-stairs.
+
+Aminta sat close to the bedside in a darkened room.  They greeted
+silently.  He saw the white shell of the life that had flown; he took his
+mother's hand and kissed it, and knelt, clasping it.
+
+Fear of disturbing his prayer kept Aminta seated.  Death was a stranger
+to him.  The still warm, half-cold, nerveless hand smote the fact of
+things as they were through the prayer for things as we would have them.
+The vitality of his prayer was the sole light he had.  It drew
+sustainment from the dead hand in his grasp, and cowered down to the
+earth claiming all we touch.  He tried to summon vision of a soaring
+spirituality; he could not; his understanding and senses were too
+stricken.  He prayed on.  His prayer was as a little fountain, not rising
+high out of earth, and in the clutch of death; but its being it had from
+death, his love gave it food.
+
+Prayer is power within us to communicate with the desired beyond our
+thirsts.  The goodness of the dear good mother gone was in him for
+assurance of a breast of goodness to receive her, whatever the nature of
+the eternal secret may be.  The good life gone lives on in the mind; the
+bad has but a life in the body, and that not lasting,--it extends,
+dispreads, it worms away, it perishes.  Need we more to bid the mind
+perceive through obstructive flesh the God who reigns, a devil
+vanquished?  Be certain that it is the pure mind we set to perceive.  The
+God discerned in thought is another than he of the senses.  And let the
+prayer be as a little fountain.  Rising on a spout, from dread of the
+hollow below, the prayer may be prolonged in words begetting words, and
+have a pulse of fervour: the spirit of it has fallen after the first jet.
+That is the delirious energy of our craving, which has no life in our
+souls.  We do not get to any heaven by renouncing the Mother we spring
+from; and when there is an eternal secret for us, it is befit to believe
+that Earth knows, to keep near her, even in our utmost aspirations.
+
+Weyburn still knelt.  He was warned to quit the formal posture of an
+exhausted act by the thought, that he had come to reflect upon how he
+might be useful to his boys in a like calamity.
+
+Having risen, he became aware, that for some time of his kneeling
+Aminta's hand had been on his head, and they had raised their souls in
+unison.  It was a soul's link.  They gazed together on the calm, rapt
+features.  They passed from the room.
+
+'I cannot thank you,' he said.
+
+'Oh no; I have the reason for gratitude,' said she.  'I have learnt to
+know and love her, and hope I may imitate when my time is near.'
+
+"She..... at the last?'
+
+'Peacefully; no pain.  The breath had not left her very long before you
+came.'
+
+'I said I cannot; but I must--
+
+'Do not.'
+
+'Not in speech, then.'
+
+They went into the tasteful little sitting-room below, where the
+stillness closed upon them as a consciousness of loss.
+
+'You have comforted her each day,' he said.
+
+'It has been my one happiness.'
+
+'I could not wish for better than for her to have known you.'
+
+'Say that for me.  I have gained.  She left her last words for you with
+me.  They were love, love .  .  .  pride in her son: thanks to God for
+having been thought worthy to give him birth.'
+
+'She was one of the noble women of earth.'
+
+'She was your mother.  Let me not speak any more.  I think I will now go.
+I am rarely given to these--'
+
+The big drops were falling.
+
+'You have not ordered your carriage?'
+
+'It brings me here.  I find my way home.'
+
+'Alone?'
+
+'I like the independence.'
+
+'At night, too!'
+
+'Nothing harmed me.  Now it is daylight.  A letter arrived for you from
+High Brent this morning.  I forgot to bring it.  Yesterday two of your
+pupils called here.  Martha saw them.'
+
+Her naming of the old servant familiarly melted him.  'You will not bear
+to hear praise or thanks.'
+
+'If I deserved them.  I should like you to call on Dr. Buxton; he will
+tell you more than we can.  He drove with me the first day, after I had
+sent you the local doctor's report.  I had it from the messenger, his
+assistant.'
+
+Weyburn knew Dr. Buxton's address.  He begged her to stay and take some
+nourishment; ventured a remark on her wasted look.
+
+'It is poor fare in cottages.'
+
+'I have been feeding on better than bread and meat,' she said.' I should
+have eaten if I had felt appetite.  My looks will recover, such as they
+are.  I hope I have grown out of them; they are a large part of the
+bondage of women.  You would like to see me safe into some conveyance.
+Go up-stairs for a few minutes; I will wait here.'
+
+He obeyed her.  Passing from the living to the dead, from the dead to the
+living, they were united in his heart.
+
+Her brevity of tone, and her speech, so practical upon a point of need,
+under a crisis of distress, reminded him of Lady Charlotte at the time
+of the groom's arrival with her letter.
+
+Aminta was in no hurry to drive.  She liked walking and looking down on
+London, she said.
+
+'My friend and schoolmate, Selina Collett, comes to me at Whitsuntide.
+We have taken a house on the Upper Thames, above Marlow.  You will come
+and see us, if you can be persuaded to leave your boys.  We have a
+boathouse, and a bathing-plank for divers.  The stream is quiet there
+between rich meadows.  It seems to flow as if it thought.  I am not
+poetical; I tell you only my impression. You shall be a great deal by
+yourself, as men prefer to be.'
+
+'As men are forced to be--I beg!' said he.  'Division is against my
+theories.'
+
+'We might help, if we understood one another, I have often fancied.
+I know something of your theories.  I should much like to hear you
+some day on the scheme of the school in Switzerland, and also on the
+schoolmaster's profession.  She whom we have lost was full of it, and
+spoke of it to me as much as her weakness would permit.  The subject
+seemed to give her strength.'
+
+'She has always encouraged me,' said Weyburn.' I have lost her, but I
+shall feel that she is not absent.  She had ideas of her own about men
+and women.'
+
+'Some she mentioned.'
+
+'And about marriage?'
+
+'That too.'
+
+Aminta shook herself out of a sudden stupor.
+
+'Her mind was very clear up to the last hour upon all the subjects
+interesting her son.  She at one time regretted his not being a soldier,
+for the sake of his father's memory.  Then she learned to think he could
+do more for the world as the schoolmaster.  She said you can persuade.'
+
+'We had our talks.  She would have the reason, if she was to be won.
+I like no other kind of persuasion.'
+
+'I long to talk over the future school with you.  That is, to hear your
+plans.'
+
+They were at the foot of the hill, in view of an inn announcing livery
+stables.  She wished to walk the whole distance.  He shook his head.
+
+The fly was ready for her soon, and he begged to see her safe home.  She
+refused, after taking her seat, but said: 'At any other time.  We are old
+friends.  You will really go through the ceremony of consulting me about
+the school?'
+
+He replied: 'I am honoured.'
+
+'Ah, not to me,' said Aminta.  'We will be the friends we--You will not
+be formal with me?--not from this day?'
+
+She put out her hand.  He took it gently.  The dead who had drawn them
+together withheld a pressure.  Holding the hand, he said: 'I shall crave
+leave of absence for some days.'
+
+'I shall see you on the day,' said she.  'If it is your desire: I will
+send word.'
+
+'We both mourn at heart.  We should be in company.  Adieu.'
+
+Their hands fell apart.  They looked.  The old school time was in each
+mind.  They saw it as a shore-bank in grey outline across morning mist.
+Years were between; and there was a division of circumstance, more
+repelling than an abyss or the rush of deep wild waters.
+
+Neither of them had regrets.  Under their cloud, and with the grief they
+shared, they were as happy as two could be in recovering one another as
+friends.
+
+On the day of the funeral Aminta drove to the spot where they had parted
+--she walked to the churchyard.
+
+She followed the coffin to its gravel-heap, wishing neither to see nor be
+seen, only that she might be so far attached to the remains of the dead;
+and the sense of blessedness she had in her bowed simplicity of feeling
+was as if the sainted dead had cleansed and anointed her.
+
+When the sods had been cast on, the last word spoken, she walked her way
+back, happy in being alone, unnoticed.  She was grateful to the chief
+mourner for letting her go as she had come.  That helped her to her sense
+of purification, the haven out of the passions, hardly less quiet than
+the repose into which the dear dead woman, his mother, had entered.
+
+London lay beneath her.  The might of the great hive hummed at the verge
+of her haven of peace without disturbing.  There she had been what none
+had known of her: an ambitious girl, modest merely for lack of
+intrepidity; paralyzed by her masterful lord; aiming her highest at a
+gilt weathercock; and a disappointed creature, her breast a home of
+serpents; never herself.  She thought and hoped she was herself now.
+Alarm lest this might be another of her moods, victim of moods as she had
+latterly been, was a shadow armed with a dart playing round her to find
+the weak spot.  It sprang from her acknowledged weakness of nature; and
+she cast about for how to keep it outside her and lean on a true though a
+small internal support.  She struck at her desires, to sound them.
+
+They were yesterday for love; partly for distinction, for a woman having
+beauty to shine in the sphere of beauty; but chiefly to love and be
+loved, therefore to live.  She had yesterday read letters of a man who
+broke a music from the word--about as much music as there is in a tuning
+--fork, yet it rang and lingered; and he was not the magical musician.
+Now those letters were as dust of the road.  The sphere of beauty was a
+glass lamp-globe for delirious moths.  She had changed.  Belief in the
+real change gave her full view of the compliant coward she had been.
+
+Her heart assured her she had natural courage.  She felt that it could be
+stubborn to resist a softness.  Now she cared no more for the hackneyed
+musical word; friendship was her desire.  If it is not life's poetry, it
+is a credible prose; a land of low undulations instead of Alps; beyond
+the terrors and the deceptions.  And she could trust her friend: he who
+was a singular constancy.  His mother had told her of his preserving
+letters of a girl he loved when at school; and of his journeys to an
+empty house at Dover.  That was past; but, as the boy, so the man would
+be in sincerity of feeling trustworthy to the uttermost.
+
+She mused on the friend.  He was brave.  She had seen how he took his
+blow, and sorrow as a sister, conquering emotion.  It was not to be
+expected of him by one who knew him when at school.  Had he faults?  He
+must have faults.  She, curiously, could see none.  After consenting to
+his career as a schoolmaster, and seeing nothing ludicrous in it, she
+endowed him with the young school-hero's reputation, beheld him with the
+eyes of the girl who had loved him--and burnt his old letters!--bitterly
+regretted that she burnt his letters!--and who had applauded his contempt
+of ushers and master opposing his individual will and the thing he
+thought it right to do.
+
+Musing thus, she turned a corner, on a sudden, in her mind, and ran
+against a mirror, wherein a small figure running up to meet her, grew
+large and nodded, with the laugh and eyes of Browny.  So little had she
+changed!  The stedfast experienced woman rebuked that volatile, and some
+might say, faithless girl.  But the girl had her answer: she declared
+they were one and the same, affirmed that the years between were a bad
+night's dream, that her heart had been faithful, that he who conjures
+visions of romance in a young girl's bosom must always have her heart,
+as a crisis will reveal it to her.  She had the volubility of the mettled
+Browny of old, and was lectured.  When she insisted on shouting 'Matey!
+Matey!' she was angrily spurned and silenced.
+
+Aminta ceased to recline in her carriage.  An idea that an indolent
+posture fostered vapourish meditations, counselled her sitting rigidly
+upright and interestedly observing the cottages and merry gutter-children
+along the squat straight streets of a London suburb.  Her dominant
+ultimate thought was, 'I, too, can work!'  Like her courage, the plea of
+a capacity to work appealed for confirmation to the belief which exists
+without demonstrated example; and as she refrained from probing to the
+inner sources of that mental outcry, it was allowed to stand and remain
+among the convictions we store--wherewith to shape our destinies.
+
+Childishly indeed, quite witlessly, she fell into a trick of repeating
+the name of Matthew Weyburn in her breast and on her lips, after the
+manner of Isabella Lawrence Finchley, when she had inquired for his
+Christian name, and went on murmuring it, as if sucking a new bonbon,
+with the remark: 'It sounds nice, it suits the mouth.'  Little Selina
+Collett had told, Aminta remembered, how those funny boys at Cuper's
+could not at first get the name 'Aminta' to suit the mouth, but went
+about making hideous faces in uttering it.  She smiled at the
+recollection, and thought, up to a movement of her lips, one is not
+tempted to do that in saying Matthew Weyburn!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SHOWING A SECRET FISHED WITHOUT ANGLING
+
+That great couchant dragon of the devouring jaws and the withering
+breath, known as our London world, was in expectation of an excitement
+above yawns on the subject of a beautiful Lady Doubtful proposing
+herself, through a group of infatuated influential friends, to a decorous
+Court, as one among the ladies acceptable.  The popular version of it
+sharpened the sauce by mingling romance and cynicism very happily; for
+the numerous cooks, when out of the kitchen, will furnish a piquant dish.
+Thus, a jewel-eyed girl of half English origin (a wounded British officer
+is amiably nursed in a castle near the famous Peninsula battlefield,
+etc.), running wild down the streets of Seville, is picked up by Lord
+Ormont, made to discard her tambourine, brought over to our shores, and
+allowed the decoration of his name, without the legitimate adornment of
+his title.  Discontented with her position after a time, she now pushes
+boldly to claim the place which will be most effective in serving her as
+a bath.  She has, by general consent, beauty; she must, seeing that she
+counts influential friends, have witchery.  Those who have seen her
+riding and driving beside her lord, speak of Andalusian grace, Oriental
+lustre, fit qualification for the fair slave of a notoriously susceptible
+old warrior.
+
+She won a party in the widening gossip world; and enough of a party in
+the regent world to make a stream.  Pretending to be the actual Countess
+of Ormont, though not publicly acknowledged as his countess by the earl,
+she had on her side the strenuous few who knew and liked her, some who
+were pleased compassionately to patronize, all idle admirers of a
+shadowed beautiful woman at bay, the devotees of any beauty in distress,
+and such as had seen, such as imagined they had seen, such as could paint
+a mental picture of a lady of imposing stature, persuasive appearance,
+pathetic history, and pronounce her to be unjustly treated, with a
+general belief that she was visible and breathing.  She had the ready
+enthusiasts, the responsive sentimentalists, and an honest active minor
+number, of whom not every one could be declared perfectly unspotted in
+public estimation, however innocent under verdict of the courts of law.
+
+Against her was the livid cloud-bank over a flowery field, that has not
+yet spoken audible thunder: the terrible aggregate social woman, of man's
+creation, hated by him, dreaded, scorned, satirized, and nevertheless,
+upheld, esteemed, applauded: a mark of civilization, on to which our
+human society must hold as long as we have nothing humaner.  She exhibits
+virtue, with face of waxen angel, with paw of desert beast, and blood
+of victims on it.  Her fold is a genial climate and the material
+pleasures for the world's sheepy: worshipping herself, she claims the
+sanctification of a performed religion.  She is gentle when unassailed,
+going her way serenely, with her malady in the blood.  When the skin
+bears witness to it, she swallows an apothecary, and there is a short
+convulsion.  She is refreshed by cutting off diseased inferior members:
+the superior betraying foul symptoms, she covers up and retains;
+rationally, too, for they minister to her present existence, and she
+lives all in the present.  Her subjects are the mixed Subservient; among
+her rebellious are earth's advanced, who have cold a morning on their
+foreheads, and these would not dethrone her, they would but shame and
+purify by other methods than the druggist.  She loves nothing.
+Undoubtedly, she dislikes the vicious.  On that merit she subsists.
+
+The vexatious thing in speaking of her is, that she compels to the use of
+the rhetorician's brass instrument.  As she is one of the Powers giving
+life and death, one may be excused.  This tremendous queen of the
+congregation has brought discredit on her sex for the scourge laid on
+quivering female flesh, and for the flippant indifference shown to misery
+and to fine distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad; and
+particularly for the undiscriminating hardness upon the starved of women.
+We forget her having been conceived in the fear of men, shaped to gratify
+them.  She is their fiction of the state they would fain beguile
+themselves to suppose her sex has reached, for their benefit; where she
+may be queen of it in a corner, certain of a loyal support, if she will
+only give men her half-the-world's assistance to uplift the fabric
+comfortable to them; together with assurance of paternity, case of mind
+in absence, exclusive possession, enormous and minutest, etc.; not by any
+means omitting a regimental orderliness, from which men are privately
+exempt, because they are men, or because they are grown boys--the brisker
+at lessons after a vacation or a truancy, says the fiction.
+
+In those days the world had oscillated, under higher leading than its
+royal laxity, to rigidity.  Tiny peccadilloes were no longer matter of
+jest, and the sinner exposed stood 'sola' to receive the brand.  A
+beautiful Lady Doubtful needed her husband's countenance if she was to
+take one of the permanent steps in public places.  The party of Lady
+Charlotte Eglett called on the livid cloud-bank aforesaid to discharge
+celestial bolts and sulphur oil on the head of an impudent, underbred,
+ambitious young slut, whose arts had bewitched a distinguished nobleman
+not young in years at least, and ensnared the remainder wits of some
+principal ancient ladies of the land.  Professional Puritans, born
+conservatives, malicious tattlers, made up a goodly tail to Lady
+Charlotte's party.  The epithet 'unbred' was accredited upon the quoted
+sayings and doings of the pretentious young person's aunt, repeated
+abroad by noblemen and gentlemen present when she committed herself;
+and the same were absurd.  They carried a laugh, and so they lived and
+circulated.  Lord Ormont submitted to the infliction of that horrid
+female in his household!  It was no wonder he stopped short of allying
+himself with the family.
+
+Nor was it a wonder that the naturally enamoured old warrior or invalided
+Mars (for she had the gift of beauty) should deem it prudent to be out of
+England when she and her crazy friends determined on the audacious move.
+Or put it the other way--for it is just as confounding right side or
+left--she and her friends take advantage of his absence to make the
+clever push for an establishment, and socially force him to legalize
+their union on his return.  The deeds of the preceding reign had
+bequeathed a sort of legendary credence to the wildest tales gossip
+could invent under a demurrer.
+
+But there was the fact, the earl was away.  Lady Charlotte's party buzzed
+everywhere.  Her ladyship had come to town to head it.  Her ladyship laid
+trains of powder from dinner-parties, balls, routs, park-processions,
+into the Lord Chamberlain's ear, and fired and exploded them, deafening
+the grand official.  Do you consider that virulent Pagan Goddesses and
+the flying torch-furies are extinct?  Error of Christians!  We have
+relinquished the old names and have no new ones for them; but they are
+here, inextinguishable, threading the day and night air with their dire
+squib-trail, if we would but see.  Hissing they go, and we do not hear.
+We feel the effects.
+
+Upon the counsel of Mrs. Lawrence, Aminta sent a letter to Lord Ormont
+at his hotel in Paris, informing him of the position of affairs.  He had
+delayed his return, and there had been none of his brief communications.
+
+She wrote, as she knew, as she felt, coldly.  She was guided by others,
+and her name was up before the world, owing to some half-remembered
+impulsion of past wishes, but her heart was numbed; she was not a woman
+to have a wish without a beat of the heart in it.  For her name she had a
+feeling, to be likened rather to the losing gambler's contemplation of a
+big stake he has flung, and sees it gone while fortune is undecided; and
+he catches at a philosophy nothing other than his hug of a modest little
+background pleasure, that he has always preferred to this accursed bad
+habit of gambling with the luck against him.  Reckless in the cast, she
+was reckless of success.
+
+Her letter was unanswered.
+
+Then, and day by day more strongly, she felt for her name.  She put a
+false heart into it.  She called herself to her hearing the Countess of
+Ormont, and deigned to consult the most foolish friend she could have
+chosen--her aunt; and even listened to her advice, that she should run
+about knocking at all the doors open to her, and state her case against
+the earl.  It seemed the course to take, the moment for taking it.  Was
+she not asked if she could now at last show she had pride?  Her pride ran
+stinging through her veins, like a band of freed prisoners who head the
+rout to fire a city.  She charged her lord with having designedly--oh!
+cunningly indeed left her to be the prey of her enemies at the hour when
+he knew it behoved him to be her great defender.  There had been no
+disguise of the things in progress: they had been spoken of allusively,
+quite comprehensibly, after the fashion common with two entertaining a
+secret semi-hostility on a particular subject; one of them being the
+creature that blushes and is educated to be delicate, reserved, and
+timorous.  He was not ignorant, and he had left her, and he would not
+reply to her letter!
+
+So fell was her mood, that an endeavour to conjure up the scene of her
+sitting beside the death-bed of Matthew Weyburn's mother, failed to sober
+and smooth it, holy though that time was.  The false heart she had put
+into the pride of her name was powerfuller than the heart in her bosom.
+But to what end had the true heart counselled her of late?  It had been
+a home of humours and languors, an impotent insurgent, the sapper of her
+character; and as we see in certain disorderly States a curative
+incendiarism usurp the functions of the sluggish citizen, and the work
+of re-establishment done by destruction, in peril of a total extinction,
+Aminta's feverish anger on behalf of her name went a stretch to vivify
+and give her dulled character a novel edge.  She said good-bye to
+cowardice.  'I have no husband to defend me--I must do it for myself.'
+The peril of a too complete exercise of independence was just intimated
+to her perceptions.  On whom the blame?  And let the motively guilty go
+mourn over consequences!  That Institution of Marriage was eyed.  Is it
+not a halting step to happiness?  It is the step of a cripple,--and one
+leg or the other poses for the feebler sex,--small is the matter which!
+And is happiness our cry?  Our cry is rather for circumstance and
+occasion to use our functions, and the conditions are denied to women by
+Marriage--denied to the luckless of women, who are many, very many:
+denied to Aminta, calling herself Countess of Ormont, for one, denied to
+Mrs. Lawrence Finchley for another, and in a base bad manner.  She had
+defended her good name triumphantly, only to enslave herself for life or
+snatch at the liberty which besmirches.
+
+Reviewing Mrs. Lawrence, Aminta's real heart pressed forward at the beat,
+in tender pity of the woman for whom a yielding to love was to sin; and
+unwomanly is the woman who does not love: men will say it.  Aminta found
+herself phrasing.  'Why was she unable to love her husband?--he is not
+old.'  She hurried in flight from the remark to confidences imparted by
+other ladies, showing strange veins in an earthy world; after which, her
+mind was bent to rebuke Mrs. Pagnell for the silly soul's perpetual
+allusions to Lord Ormont's age.  She did not think of his age.  But she
+was vividly thinking that she was young.  Young, married, loveless,
+cramped in her energies, publicly dishonoured--a Lady Doubtful, courting
+one friend whom she liked among women, one friend whom she respected
+among men; that was the sketch of her.
+
+That was in truth the outline, as much as Aminta dared sketch of herself
+without dragging her down lower than her trained instinct would bear to
+look.  Our civilization shuns nature; and most shuns it in the most
+artificially civilized, to suit the market.  They, however, are always
+close to their mother nature, beneath their second nature's mask of
+custom; and Aminta's unconscious concluding touch to the sketch: 'My
+husband might have helped me to a footing in Society,' would complete
+it as a coloured picture, if writ in tones.
+
+She said it, and for the footing in Society she had lost her taste.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence brought the final word from high quarters: that the
+application must be deferred until Lord Ormont returned to town.  It was
+known before, that such would be the decision.  She had it from the
+eminent official himself, and she kicked about the room, setting her
+pretty mouth and nose to pout and sniff, exactly like a boy whose chum
+has been mishandled by a bully.
+
+'Your dear good man is too much for us.  I thought we should drive him.
+'C'est un ruse homme de guerre.'  I like him, but I could slap him.  He
+stops the way.  Upon my word, he seems tolerably careless of his
+treasure.  Does he suppose Mrs. Paggy is a protection?  Do you know she's
+devoted to that man Morsfield?  He listens to her stories.  To judge by
+what he shouts aloud, he intends carrying you off the first opportunity,
+divorcing, and installing you in Cobeck Hall.  All he fears is, that your
+lord won't divorce.  You should have seen him the other day; he marched
+up and down the room, smacking his head and crying out: "Legal measures
+or any weapons her husband pleases!"  For he has come to believe that the
+lady would have been off with him long before, if her lord had no claim
+to the marital title.  "It 's that husband I can't get over! that
+husband!"  He reminded me, to the life, of Lawrence Finchley with a
+headache the morning after a supper, striding, with his hand on the
+shining middle of his head: "It's that Welsh rabbit! that Welsh rabbit!"
+He has a poor digestion, and he will eat cheese.  The Welsh rabbit chased
+him into his bed.  But listen to me, dear, about your Morsfield.  I told
+you he was dangerous.'
+
+'He is not my Morsfield,' said Aminta.
+
+'Beware of his having a tool in Paggy.  He boasts of letters.'
+
+'Mine? Two: and written to request him to cease writing to me.'
+
+'He stops at nothing.  And, oh, my Simplicity!  don't you see you gave
+him a step in begging him to retire?  Morsfield has lived a good deal
+among our neighbours, who expound the physiology of women.  He anatomizes
+us; pulls us to pieces, puts us together, and then animates us with a
+breath of his "passion"--sincere upon every occasion, I don't doubt.  He
+spared me, although he saw I was engaged.  Perhaps it was because I 'm of
+no definite colour.  Or he thought I was not a receptacle for "passion."
+And quite true,--Adder, the dear good fellow, has none.  Or where should
+we be?  On a Swiss Alp, in a chalet, he shooting chamois, and I milking
+cows, with 'ah-ahio, ah-ahio,' all day long, and a quarrel at night over
+curds and whey.  Well, and that 's a better old pensioner's limp to his
+end for "passion" than the foreign hotel bell rung mightily, and one of
+the two discovered with a dagger in the breast, and the other a don't-
+look lying on the pavement under the window.  Yes, and that's better than
+"passion" splitting and dispersing upon new adventures, from habit, with
+two sparks remaining of the fire.'
+
+Aminta took Mrs. Lawrence's hands.  'Is it a lecture?'
+
+She was kissed.  'Frothy gabble.  I'm really near to "passion" when I
+embrace you.  You're the only one I could run away with; live with all
+alone, I believe.  I wonder men can see you while that silly lord of
+yours is absent, and not begin Morsfielding.  They're virtuous if they
+resist.  Paggy tells the world .  .  .  well?'  Aminta had reddened.
+
+'What does my aunt tell the world?'
+
+Mrs. Lawrence laid her smoothing hand absently on a frill of lace fichu
+above a sternly disciplined bosom at half-heave.  'I think I can
+judge now that you're not much hurt by this wretched business of the
+presentation.  The little service I could do was a moral lesson to me on
+the subject of deuce-may-care antecedents.  My brother Tom, too, was
+always playing truant, as a boy.  It 's in the blood.'
+
+She seemed to be teasing, and Aminta cried: 'My aunt!  Let me hear.
+She tells the world--?'
+
+'Paggy?  ah, yes.  Only that she says the countess has an exalted opinion
+of Mr. Secretary's handwriting--as witnessed by his fair copy of the
+Memoirs, of course.'
+
+'Poor woman!  How can she talk such foolishness!  I guessed it.'
+
+'You wear a dark red rose when you're guessing, 'ma mie,'--French for, my
+Aminta.'
+
+'But consider, Isabella, Mr. Weyburn has just had the heaviest of losses.
+My aunt should spare mention of him.'
+
+'Matthew Weyburn! we both like the name.'  Mrs. Lawrence touched at her
+friend and gazed.  'I've seen it on certain evenings--crimson over an
+olive sky.  What it forebodes, I can't imagine; but it's the end of a
+lovely day.  They say it threatens rain, if it begins one.  It 's an
+ominous herald.'
+
+'You make me,' said Aminta.  'I must redden if you keep looking at me so
+closely.'
+
+'Now frown one little bit, please.  I love to see you.  I love to see a
+secret disclose itself ingenuously.'
+
+'But what secret, my dear?' cried Aminta's defence of her innocence; and
+she gave a short frown.
+
+'Have no fear.  Mr. Secretary is not the man to be Morsfielding.  And he
+can enjoy his repast; a very good sign.  But is he remaining long?'
+
+'He is going soon, I hear.'
+
+'He's a good boy.  I could have taken to him myself, and not dreaded a
+worrying.  There 's this difference between you and me, though, my
+Aminta; one of us has the fireplace prepared for what's-his-name--
+"passion."  Kiss me.  How could you fancy you were going to have a woman
+for your friend and keep hidden from her any one of the secrets that
+blush! and with Paggy to aid!  I am sure it means very little.
+Admiration for good handwriting is--' a smile broke the sentence.
+
+'You're astray, Isabella.'
+
+'Not I, dear, I'm too fond of you.'
+
+'You read what is not.'
+
+'What is not yet written, you mean.'
+
+'What never could be written.'
+
+'I read what is in the blood, and comes out to me when I look.  That lord
+of yours should take to study you as I have done ever since I fell in
+love with you.  He 's not counselling himself well in keeping away.'
+
+'Now you speak wisely,' said Aminta.
+
+'Not a particle more wisely.  And the reason is close at hand--see.
+You are young, you attract--how could it be otherwise?--and you have
+"passion" sleeping, and likely to wake with a spring whether roused or
+not.  In my observation good-man t'other fellow--the poet's friend--is
+never long absent when the time is ripe--at least, not in places where we
+gather together.  Well, one is a buckler against the other: I don't say
+with lovely Amy May,--with an honourable woman.  But Aminta can smell
+powder and grow more mettlesome.  Who can look at you and be blind to
+passion sleeping!  The sight of you makes me dream of it--me, a woman,
+cool as a wine-cellar or a well.  So there's to help you to know yourself
+and be on your guard.  I know I'm not deceived, because I've fallen in
+love with you, and no love can be without jealousy, so I have the needle
+in my breast, that points at any one who holds a bit of you.  Kind of
+sympathetic needle to the magnet behind anything.  You'll know it, if you
+don't now.  I should have felt the thing without the aid of Paggy.  So,
+then, imagine all my nonsense unsaid, and squeeze a drop or two of 'sirop
+de bon conseil' out of it, as if it were your own wise meditations.'  The
+rest of Mrs. Lawrence's discourse was a swallow's wing skimming the city
+stream.  She departed, and Aminta was left to beat at her heart and ask
+whether it had a secret.
+
+But if there was one, the secret was out, and must have another name.
+It had been a secret for her until she heard her friend speak those pin-
+points that pricked her heart, and sent the blood coursing over her face,
+like a betrayal, so like as to resemble a burning confession.
+
+But if this confessed the truth, she was the insanest of women.
+No woman could be surer that she had her wits.  She had come to see
+things, previously mysteries, with surprising clearness. As, for example,
+that passion was part of her nature; therefore her very life, lying
+tranced.  She certainly could not love without passion such an
+abandonment was the sole justification of love in a woman standing where
+she stood.  And now for the first time she saw her exact position before
+the world; and she saw some way into her lord: saw that he nursed a
+wound, extracted balm from anything enabling him to show the world how he
+despised it, and undesigningly immolated her for the petty gratification.
+
+It could not, in consequence, be the truth.  To bear what she had borne
+she must be a passionless woman; and she was glad of her present safety
+in thinking it.  Once it was absolutely true.  She swam away to the
+golden-circled Island of Once; landed, and dwelt there solitarily and
+blissfully, looking forward to Sunday's walk round the park, looking back
+on it.  Proudly she could tell herself that her dreams of the Prince of
+the island had not been illusions as far as he was concerned; for he had
+a great soul.  He did not aim at a tawdry glory.  He was a loss to our
+army--no loss to his country or the world.  A woman might clasp her
+feeling of pride in having foreseen distinction for him; and a little,
+too, in distinguishing now the true individual distinction from the
+feathered uniform vulgar.  Where the girl's dreams had proved illusions,
+she beheld in a title and luxuries, in a loveless marriage.
+
+That was perilous ground.  Still it taught her to see that the
+substantial is the dust; and passion not being active, she could reflect.
+After a series of penetrative flashes, flattering to her intelligence the
+more startling they were, reflection was exhausted.  She sank on her
+nature's desire to join or witness agonistic incidents, shocks,
+wrestlings, the adventures which are brilliant air to sanguine energies.
+Imagination shot tap, and whirled the circle of a succession of them; and
+she had a companion and leader, unfeatured, reverently obeyed, accepted
+as not to be known, not to be guessed at, in the deepest hooded inmost of
+her being speechlessly divined.
+
+The sudden result of Aminta's turmoil was a determination that she must
+look on Steignton.  And what was to be gained by that?  She had no idea.
+And how had she stopped her imaginative flight with the thought of
+looking on Steignton?  All she could tell was, that it would close a
+volume.  She could not say why the volume must be closed.
+
+Her orders for the journey down to Steignton were prompt.  Mrs. Pagnell
+had an engagement at the house of Lady Staines for the next day to meet
+titles and celebrities, and it precluded her comprehension of the
+project.  She begged to have the journey postponed.  She had pledged her
+word, she said.
+
+'To Mr. Morsfield?' said Aminta.
+
+Her aunt was astounded.
+
+'I did tell him we should be there, my dear.'  'He appears to have a
+pleasure in meeting you.'  'He is one of the real gentlemen of the land.'
+
+'You correspond with him?'
+
+'I may not be the only one.'
+
+'Foolish aunty!  How can you speak to me in that senseless way?' cried
+Aminta.  'You know the schemer he is, and that I have no protection from
+his advances unless I run the risk of bloodshed.'
+
+'My dear Aminta, whenever I go into society, and he is present, I know I
+shall not be laughed at, or fall into that pit of one of their dead
+silences, worse for me to bear than titters and faces.  It is their way
+of letting one feel they are of birth above us.  Mr. Morsfield--purer
+blood than many of their highest titles--is always polite, always
+deferential; he helps me to feel I am not quite out of my element in the
+sphere I prefer.  We shall be travelling alone?'
+
+'Have you any fear?'
+
+'Not if nothing happens.  Might we not ask that Mr. Weyburn?'
+
+'He has much work to do.  He will not long be here.  He is absent
+to-day.'
+
+Mrs. Pagnell remarked: 'I must say he earns his money easily.'
+
+Aminta had softened herself with the allusion to the shortness of his
+time with them.  Her aunt's coarse hint, and the thought of his loss,
+and the banishment it would be to her all the way to Steignton, checked
+a sharp retort she could have uttered, but made it necessary to hide her
+eyes from sight.  She went to her bedroom, and flung herself on the bed.
+Even so little as an unspoken defence of him shook her to floods of
+tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ALONG TWO ROADS TO STEIGNTON
+
+Unaccountable resolutions, if impromptu and springing from the female
+breast, are popularly taken for caprices; and even when they divert the
+current of a history, and all the more when they are very small matters
+producing a memorable crisis.  In this way does a lazy world consign
+discussion to silence with the cynical closure.  Man's hoary shrug at a
+whimsy sex is the reading of his enigma still.
+
+But ask if she has the ordinary pumping heart in that riddle of a breast:
+and then, as the organ cannot avoid pursuit, we may get hold of it, and
+succeed in spelling out that she is consequent, in her fashion.  She is a
+creature of the apparent moods and shifts and tempers only because she is
+kept in narrow confines, resembling, if you like, a wild cat caged.
+Aminta's journey down to Steignton turned the course of other fortunes
+besides her own; and she disdained the minor adventure it was, while
+dreaming it important; and she determined eagerly on going, without
+wanting to go; and it was neither from a sense of duty nor in a spirit
+of contrariety that she went.  Nevertheless, with her heart in hand,
+her movements are traceably as rational as a soldier's before the enemy
+or a trader's matching his customer.
+
+The wish to look on Steignton had been spoken or sighed for during long
+years between Aminta and her aunt, until finally shame and anger clinched
+the subject.  To look on Steignton for once was now Aminta's phrasing of
+her sudden resolve; it appeared as a holiday relief from recent worries,
+and it was an expedition with an aim, though she had but the coldest
+curiosity to see the place, and felt alien to it.  Yet the thought,
+never to have seen Steignton!  roused phantoms of dead wishes to drive
+the strange engine she was, faster than the living would have done.  Her
+reason for haste was rationally founded on the suddenness of her resolve,
+which, seeing that she could not say she desired to go, seemed to come of
+an external admonition; and it counselled quick movements, lest her
+inspired obedience to the prompting should as abruptly breathe itself
+out.  'And in that case I shall never have seen Steignton at all,' she
+said, with perfect calmness, and did not attempt to sound her meaning.
+
+She did know that she was a magazine of a great storage of powder.  It
+banked inoffensively dry.  She had forgiven her lord, owning the real
+nobleman he was in courtesy to women, whom his inherited ideas of them so
+quaintly minimized and reduced to pretty insect or tricky reptile.  They,
+too, had the choice of being ultimately the one or the other in fact; the
+latter most likely.
+
+If, however, she had forgiven her lord, the shattering of their union was
+the cost of forgiveness.  In letting him stand high, as the lofty man she
+had originally worshipped, she separated herself from him, to feel that
+the humble she was of a different element, as a running water at a
+mountain's base.  They are one in the landscape; they are far from one
+in reality.  Aminta's pride of being chafed at the yoke of marriage.
+
+Her aunt was directed to prepare for a start at an early hour the next
+morning.  Mrs. Pagnell wrote at her desk, and fussed, and ordered the
+posting chariot, and bewailed herself submissively; for it was the
+Countess of Ormont speaking when Aminta delivered commands, and the only
+grievance she dared to mutter was 'the unexpectedness.'  Her letters
+having been despatched, she was amazed in the late evening to hear Aminta
+give the footman orders for the chariot to be ready at the door an hour
+earlier than the hour previously appointed.  She remonstrated.  Aminta
+simply observed that it would cause less inconvenience to all parties.
+A suspicion of her aunt's proceedings was confirmed by the good woman's
+flustered state.  She refrained from smiling.
+
+She would have mustered courage to invite Matthew Weyburn as her escort,
+if he had been at hand.  He was attending to his affairs with lawyers--
+mainly with his friend Mr. Abner.  She studied map and gazetteer till
+late into the night.  Giving her orders to the postillion on the pavement
+in the morning, she named a South-westerly direction out of London, and
+after entering the chariot, she received a case from one of the footmen.
+
+'What is that, my dear?' said Mrs. Pagnell.
+
+Aminta unlocked and laid it open.  A pair of pistols met Mrs. Pagnell's
+gaze.
+
+'We shan't be in need of those things?' the lady said anxiously.
+
+'One never knows, on the road, aunt.'
+
+'Loaded?  You wouldn't hesitate to fire; I'm sure.'
+
+'At Mr. Morsfield himself, if he attempted to stop me.'
+
+Mrs. Pagnell withdrew into her astonishment, and presently asked, in a
+tone of some indignation: 'Why did you mention Mr. Morsfield, Aminta?'
+
+'Did you not write to him yesterday afternoon, aunt?'
+
+'You read the addresses on my letters!'
+
+'Did you not supply him with our proposed route and the time for
+starting?'
+
+'Pistols!' exclaimed Mrs. Pagnell.  'One would fancy you think we are in
+the middle of the last century.  Mr. Morsfield is a gentleman, not a
+highwayman.'
+
+'He gives the impression of his being a madman.'
+
+'The real madman is your wedded husband, Aminta, if wedding it was!'
+
+It was too surely so, in Aminta's mind.  She tried, by looking out of the
+window, to forget her companion.  The dullness of the roads and streets
+opening away to flat fields combined with the postillion's unvarying jog
+to sicken her thoughts over the exile from London she was undergoing, and
+the chance that Matthew Weyburn might call at a vacant house next day, to
+announce his term of service to the earl, whom he had said he much wanted
+to see.  He said it in his sharp manner when there was decision behind
+it.  Several times after contemplating the end of her journey, and not
+perceiving any spot of pleasure ahead, an emotion urged her to turn back;
+for the young are acutely reasoning when their breasts advise them to
+quit a road where no pleasure beckons.
+
+Unlike Matthew Weyburn, the tiptoe sparkle of a happy mind did not leap
+from her at wayside scenes, a sweep of grass, distant hills, clouds in
+flight.  She required, since she suffered, the positive of events or
+blessings to kindle her glow.
+
+Matthew Weyburn might call at the house.  Would he be disappointed?  He
+had preserved her letters of the old school-days.  She had burnt his.
+But she had not burnt the letters of Mr. Morsfield; and she cared nothing
+for that man.  Assuredly she merited the stigma branding women as crack-
+brained.  Yet she was not one of the fools; she could govern a household,
+and she liked work, she had the capacity for devotedness.  So, therefore,
+she was a woman perverted by her position, and she shook her bonds in
+revolt from marriage.  Imagining a fall down some suddenly spied chasm
+of her nature, she had a sisterly feeling for the women named sinful.
+At the same time, reflecting that they are sinful only with the sinful,
+she knelt thankfully at the feet of the man who had saved her from such
+danger.  Tears threatened.  They were a poor atonement for the burning of
+his younger letters.  But not he--she was the sufferer, and she whipped
+up a sensation of wincing at the flames they fell to, and at their void
+of existence, committing sentimental idiocies worthy of a lovesick girl,
+consciously to escape the ominous thought, which her woman's perception
+had sown in her, that he too chafed at a marriage no marriage: was true
+in fidelity, not true through infidelity, as she had come to be.  The
+thought implied misery for both.  She entered a black desolation, with
+the prayer that he might not be involved, for his own sake: partly also
+on behalf of the sustaining picture the young schoolmaster at his task,
+merry among his dear boys, to trim and point them body and mind for their
+business in the world, painted for her a weariful prospect of the life
+she must henceforth drag along.
+
+Is a woman of the plain wits common to numbers ever deceived in her
+perception of a man's feelings for her?  Let her first question herself
+whether she respects him.  If she does not, her judgement will go easily
+astray, intuition and observation are equally at fault, she has no key;
+he has charmed her blood, that is all.  But if she respects him, she
+cannot be deceived; respect is her embrace of a man's character.
+Aminta's vision was clear.  She had therefore to juggle with the fact
+revealed, that she might keep her heart from rushing out; and the process
+was a disintegration of her feminine principle of docility under the
+world's decrees.  At each pause of her mental activity she was hurled
+against the state of marriage.  Compassion for her blameless fellow in
+misery brought a deluge to sweep away institutions and landmarks.
+
+But supposing the blest worst to happen, what exchange had she to bestow?
+Her beauty?  She was reputed beautiful.  It had made a madman of one man;
+and in her poverty of endowments to be generous with, she hovered over
+Mr. Morsfield like a cruel vampire, for the certification that she had a
+much-prized gift to bestow upon his rival.
+
+But supposing it: she would then be no longer in the shiny garden of the
+flowers of wealth; and how little does beauty weigh as all aid to an
+active worker in the serious fighting world!  She would be a kind of
+potted rose-tree under his arm, of which he must eventually tire.
+
+A very cold moment came, when it seemed that even the above supposition,
+in the case of a woman who has been married, is shameful to her, a sin
+against her lover, and should be obliterated under floods of scarlet.
+For, if she has pride, she withers to think of pushing the most noble of
+men upon his generosity.  And, further, if he is not delicately
+scrupulous, is there not something wanting in him?  The very cold wave
+passed, leaving the sentence: better dream of being plain friends.
+
+Mrs. Pagnell had been quietly chewing her cud of the sullens, as was the
+way with her after a snub.  She now resumed her gossip of the naughty
+world she knelt to and expected to see some day stricken by a bolt from
+overhead; containing, as it did, such wicked members as that really
+indefensible brazen Mrs. Amy May, who was only the daughter of a half-pay
+naval captain, and that Marquis of Collestou, who would, they say,
+decorate her with his title to-morrow, if her husband were but somewhere
+else.  She spread all sorts of report, about Mr. Morsfield, and he was
+honour itself in his reserve about her.  'Depend upon it, Aminta--he was
+not more than a boy then, and they say she aimed at her enfranchisement
+by plotting the collision, for his Yorkshire revenues are immense,
+and he is, you know, skilful in the use of arms, and Captain May has no
+resources whatever: penury! no one cares to speculate how they contrive!
+---but while that dreadful duelling--and my lord as bad as any in his
+day-exists, depend upon it, an unscrupulous good-looking woman has as
+many lives for her look of an eye or lift of a finger as a throned
+Ottoman Turk on his divan.'
+
+Aminta wished to dream.  She gave her aunt a second dose, and the lady
+relapsed again.
+
+Power to dream had gone.  She set herself to look at roadside things,
+cottage gardens, old housewives in doorways, gaffer goodman meeting his
+crony on the path, groups of boys and girls.  She would take the girls,
+Matthew Weyburn the boys.  She had lessons to give to girls, she had
+sympathy, pity, anticipation.  That would be a life of happy service.
+It might be a fruitful trial of the system he proposed, to keep the boys
+and girls in company as much as possible, both at lessons and at games.
+His was the larger view.  Her lord's view appeared similar to that of her
+aunt's 'throned Ottoman Turk on his divan.'  Matthew Weyburn believed in
+the bettering of the world; Lord Ormont had no belief like it.
+
+Presently Mrs. Pagnell returned to the charge, and once more she was
+nipped, and irritated to declare she had never known her niece's temper
+so provoking.  Aminta was launching a dream of a lass she had seen in a
+field, near a white hawthorn, standing upright, her left arm aloft round
+the pole of a rake, the rim of her bonnet tipped on her forehead; an
+attitude of a rustic.
+
+Britannia with helmet heeling at dignity.  The girl's eyes hung to the
+passing chariot, without movement of her head.  It was Aminta who looked
+back, and she saw the girl looking away.  Among the superior dames and
+damsels she had seen, there was not one to match that figure for stately
+air, gallant ease, and splendour of pose.  Matthew Weyburn would have
+admired the girl.  Aminta did better than envy, she cast off the last
+vestiges of her bitter ambition to be a fine lady, and winged into the
+bosom of the girl, and not shyly said 'yes' to Matthew Weyburn, and to
+herself, deep in herself: 'A maid has no need to be shy.'  Hardly
+blushing, she walks on into the new life beside him, and hears him say:
+'I in my way, you in yours; we are equals, the stronger for being
+equals,' and she quite agrees, and she gives him the fuller heart for
+his not requiring her to be absorbed--she is the braver mate for him.
+Does not that read his meaning?  Happiest of the girls of earth, she has
+divined it at once, from never having had the bitter ambition to be a
+slave, that she might wear rich tissues; and let herself be fettered,
+that she might loll in idleness; lose a soul to win a title; escape
+commonplace to discover it ghastlier under cloth of gold, and the animal
+crowned, adored, fattened, utterly served, in the class called by consent
+of human society the Upper.
+
+Reason whispered a reminder of facts to her.
+
+'But I am not the Countess of Ormont!' she said.  She felt herself the
+girl, her sensations were so intensely simple.
+
+Proceeding to an argument, that the earl did not regard her as the
+Countess of Ormont, or the ceremony at the British Embassy as one serious
+and binding, she pushed her reason too far: sweet delusion waned.  She
+waited for some fresh scene to revive it.
+
+Aminta sat unwittingly weaving her destiny.
+
+While she was thus engaged, a carriage was rolling on the more westerly
+road down to Steignton.  Seated in it were Lady Charlotte Eglett and
+Matthew Weyburn.  They had met at Arthur Abner's office the previous day.
+She went there straight from Lord Ormont's house-agent and upholsterer,
+to have a queer bit of thunderous news confirmed, that her brother was
+down at Steignton, refurnishing the house, and not for letting.  She
+was excited: she treated Arthur Abner's closed-volume reticence as a
+corroboration of the house-agent's report, and hearing Weyburn speak of
+his anxiety to see the earl immediately, in order to get release from his
+duties, proposed a seat in her carriage; for down Steignton way she meant
+to go, if only as excuse for a view of the old place.  She kept asking
+what Lord Ormont wanted down at Steignton refurnishing the house, and not
+to let it!  Her evasions of answers that, plain speculation would supply
+were quaint.  'He hasn't my feeling for Steignton.  He could let it--
+I couldn't.  Sacrilege to me to have a tenant in my old home where I was
+born.  He's furnishing to raise his rent.  His country won't give him
+anything to do, so he turns miser.  That's my brother Rowsley's way of
+taking on old age.'
+
+Her brother Rowsley might also be showing another sign of his calamitous
+condition.  She said to Weyburn, in the carriage, that her brother
+Rowsley might like having his hair clipped by the Philistine woman; which
+is one of the ways of strong men to confess themselves ageing.  'Not,'
+said she, with her usual keen justness 'not that I've, a word against
+Delilah.  I look upon her as a patriot; she dallied and she used the
+scissors on behalf of her people.  She wasn't bound to Samson in honour,
+--liked a strong man, probably enough.  She proved she liked her country
+better.  The Jews wrote the story of it, so there she stands for
+posterity to pelt her, poor wretch.'
+
+'A tolerably good analogy for the story of men and women generally,' said
+Weyburn.
+
+'Ah, well, you've a right to talk; you don't run miauling about women.
+It 's easy to be squashy on that subject.  As for the Jews, I don't go by
+their history, but now they 're down I don't side with the Philistines,
+or Christians.  They 're good citizens, and they 've got Samson in the
+brain, too.  That comes of persecution, a hard education.  They beat the
+world by counting in the head.  That 's because they 've learnt the value
+of fractions.  Napoleon knew it in war, when he looked to the boots and
+great-coats of his men;  those were his fractions.  Lord Ormont thinks he
+had too hard-and-fast a system for the battle-field.'
+
+'A greater strategist than tactician, my lady?  It may be,' said Weyburn,
+smiling at her skips.
+
+'Massing his cannon to make a big hole for his cavalry, my brother says;
+and weeding his infantry for the Imperial Guard he postponed the moment
+to use.'
+
+'At Moskowa?'
+
+'Waterloo.  I believe Lord Ormont would--there! his country 's lost him,
+and chose it.  They 'll have their day for repentance yet.  What a
+rapture to have a thousand horsemen following you!  I suppose there never
+was a man worthy of the name who roared to be a woman.  I know I could
+have shrieked half my life through to have been born male.  It 's no
+matter now.  When we come to this hateful old age, we meet: no, we 're no
+sex then--we 're dry sticks.  I 'll tell you: my Olmer doctor--that 's an
+impudent fellow who rode by staring into my carriage.  The window's down.
+He could see without pushing his hat in.'
+
+Weyburn looked out after a man cantering on.
+
+'A Mr. Morsfield,' he said.  'I thought it was he when I saw him go by.
+I've met him at the fencing-rooms.  He 's one of the violent fencers,
+good for making his point, if one funks an attack.'
+
+'That man Morsfield, is it?  I wonder what he's doing on the road here.
+He goes over London boasting--hum, nothing to me.  But he 'll find Lord
+Ormont's arm can protect a poor woman, whatever she is.  He'd have had it
+before, only Lord Ormont shuns a scandal.  I was telling you, my Olmer
+doctor forbade horse-riding, and my husband raised a noise like one of my
+turkeycocks on the wing; so I 've given up the saddle, to quiet him.  I
+guessed.  I went yesterday morning to my London physician.  He sounded
+me, pushed out his mouth and pulled down his nose, recommended avoidance
+of excitement.  "Is it heart?"  I said.  He said it was heart.  That was
+the best thing an old woman could hear.  He said, when he saw I wasn't
+afraid, it was likely to be quick; no doctors, no nurses and daily
+bulletins for inquirers, but just the whites of the eyes, the laying-out,
+the undertaker, and the family-vault.  That's one reason why I want to
+see Steignton before the blow that may fall any day, whether my brother
+Rowsley's there or no.  But that Olmer doctor of mine, Causitt, Peter
+Causitt, shall pay me for being a liar or else an ignoramus when I told
+him he was to tell me bluntly the nature of my disease.'
+
+A horseman, in whom they recognized Mr. Morsfield, passed, clattering on
+the road behind them.
+
+'Some woman here about,' Lady Charlotte muttered.  Weyburn saw him joined
+by a cavalier, and the two consulted and pointed whips right and left.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+As well ask (women) how a battle-field concerns them!
+Boys who can appreciate brave deeds are capable of doing them
+Careful not to smell of his office
+Chose to conceive that he thought abstractedly
+Consign discussion to silence with the cynical closure
+Convictions we store--wherewith to shape our destinies
+Death is only the other side of the ditch
+Didn't say a word  No use in talking about feelings
+Enthusiast, when not lyrical, is perilously near to boring
+He took small account of the operations of the feelings
+Her duel with Time
+Hopeless task of defending a woman from a woman
+I hate old age  It changes you so
+Ignorance roaring behind a mask of sarcasm
+Men bore the blame, though the women were rightly punished
+Never nurse an injury, great or small
+No love can be without jealousy
+Old age is a prison wall between us and young people
+Orderliness, from which men are privately exempt
+People were virtuous in past days: they counted their sinners
+Professional Puritans
+Regularity of the grin of dentistry
+That pit of one of their dead silences
+The beat of a heart with a dread like a shot in it
+The good life gone lives on in the mind
+The shots hit us behind you
+The spending, never harvesting, world
+The terrible aggregate social woman
+Venus of nature was melting into a Venus of art
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 4.
+
+XVII.     LADY CHARLOTTE'S TRIUMPH
+XVIII.    A SCENE ON THE ROAD BACK
+XIX.      THE PURSUERS
+XX.       AT THE SIGN OF THE JOLLY CRICKETERS
+XXI.      UNDER-CURRENTS IN THE MINDS OF LADY CHARLOTTE AND LORD ORMONT
+XXII.     TREATS OF THE FIRST DAY OF THE CONTENTION OF BROTHER AND SISTER
+XXIII.    THE ORMONT JEWELS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+LADY CHARLOTTE'S TRIUMPH
+
+One of the days of sovereign splendour in England was riding down the
+heavens, and drawing the royal mantle of the gold-fringed shadows over
+plain and wavy turf, blue water and woods of the country round Steignton.
+A white mansion shone to a length of oblong lake that held the sun-ball
+suffused in mild yellow.
+
+'There's the place,' Lady Charlotte said to Weyburn, as they had view of
+it at a turn of the park.  She said to herself--where I was born and
+bred!  and her sight gloated momentarily on the house and side avenues,
+a great plane standing to the right of the house, the sparkle of a little
+river running near; all the scenes she knew, all young and lively.  She
+sprang on her seat for a horse beneath her, and said, 'But this is
+healthy excitement,' as in reply to her London physician's remonstrances.
+'And there's my brother Rowsley, talking to one of the keepers,' she
+cried.  'You see Lord Ormont?  I can see a mile.  Sight doesn't fail with
+me.  He 's insisting.  'Ware poachers when Rowsley's on his ground!  You
+smell the air here?  Nobody dies round about Steignton.  Their legs wear
+out and they lie down to rest them.  It 's the finest air in the world.
+Now look, the third window left of the porch, first floor.  That was my
+room before I married.  Strangers have been here and called the place
+home.  It can never be home to any but me and Rowsley.  He sees the
+carriage.  He little thinks!  He's dressed in his white corduroy and
+knee-breeches.  Age! he won't know age till he's ninety.  Here he comes
+marching.  He can't bear surprises.  I'll wave my hand and call.'
+
+She called his name.
+
+In a few strides he was at the carriage window.  'You, Charlotte?'
+
+'Home again, Rowsley!  Bring down your eyebrows, and let me hear you're
+glad I 've come.'
+
+'What made you expect you would find me here?'
+
+'Anything-cats on the tiles at night.  You can't keep a secret from me.
+Here's Mr. Weyburn, good enough to be my escort.  I 'll get out.'
+
+She alighted, scorning help; Weyburn at her heels.  The earl nodded to
+him politely and not cordially.  He was hardly cordial to Lady Charlotte.
+
+That had no effect on her.  'A glorious day for Steignton,' she said.
+'Ah, there's the Buridon group of beeches; grander trees than grow at
+Buridon.  Old timber now.  I knew them slim as demoiselles.  Where 's the
+ash?  We had a splendid ash on the west side.'
+
+'Dead and cut down long since,' replied the earl.
+
+'So we go!'
+
+She bent her steps to the spot: a grass-covered heave of the soil.
+
+'Dear old tree!' she said, in a music of elegy: and to Weyburn: 'Looks
+like a stump of an arm lopped off a shoulder in bandages.  Nature does it
+so.  All the tenants doing well, Rowsley?'
+
+'About the same amount of trouble with them.'
+
+'Ours at Olmer get worse.'
+
+'It's a process for the extirpation of the landlords.'
+
+'Then down goes the country.'
+
+'They 've got their case, their papers tell us.'
+
+'I know they have; but we've got the soil, and we'll make a, fight of
+it.'
+
+'They can fight too, they say.'
+
+'I should be sorry to think they couldn't if they're Englishmen.'
+
+She spoke so like his old Charlotte of the younger days that her brother
+partly laughed.
+
+'Parliamentary fighting 's not much to your taste or mine.  They 've lost
+their stomach for any other.  The battle they enjoy is the battle that
+goes for the majority.  Gauge their valour by that.'
+
+'To be sure,' said his responsive sister.  She changed her note.  'But
+what I say is, let the nobles keep together and stick to their class.
+There's nothing to fear then.  They must marry among themselves, think
+of the blood: it's their first duty.  Or better a peasant girl!  Middle
+courses dilute it to the stuff in a publican's tankard.  It 's an
+adulterous beast who thinks of mixing old wine with anything.'
+
+'Hulloa!' said the earl; and she drew up.
+
+'You'll have me here till over to-morrow, Rowsley, so that I may have one
+clear day at Steignton?'
+
+He bowed.  'You will choose your room.  Mr. Weyburn is welcome.'
+
+Weyburn stated the purport of his visit, and was allowed to name an early
+day for the end of his term of service.
+
+Entering the house, Lady Charlotte glanced at the armour and stag
+branches decorating corners of the hall, and straightway laid her head
+forward, pushing after it in the direction of the drawing room.  She went
+in, stood for a minute, and came out. Her mouth was hard shut.
+
+At dinner she had tales of uxorious men, of men who married mistresses,
+of the fearful incubus the vulgar family of a woman of the inferior
+classes ever must be; and her animadversions were strong in the matter of
+gew-gaw modern furniture.  The earl submitted to hear.
+
+She was, however, keenly attentive whenever he proffered any item of
+information touching Steignton.  After dinner Weyburn strolled to the
+points of view she cited as excellent for different aspects of her old
+home.
+
+He found her waiting to hear his laudation when he came back; and in the
+early morning she was on the terrace, impatient to lead him down to the
+lake.  There, at the boat-house, she commanded him to loosen a skiff and
+give her a paddle.  Between exclamations, designed to waken louder from
+him, and not so successful as her cormorant hunger for praise of
+Steignton required, she plied him to confirm with his opinion an opinion
+that her reasoning mind had almost formed in the close neighbourhood of
+the beloved and honoured person providing it; for abstract ideas were
+unknown to her.  She put it, however, as in the abstract:--
+
+'How is it we meet people brave as lions before an enemy, and rank
+cowards where there's a botheration among their friends at home?  And
+tell me, too, if you've thought the thing over, what's the meaning of
+this?  I 've met men in high places, and they've risen to distinction by
+their own efforts, and they head the nation.  Right enough, you'd say.
+Well, I talk with them, and I find they've left their brains on the
+ladder that led them up; they've only the ideas of their grandfather on
+general subjects.  I come across a common peasant or craftsman, and he
+down there has a mind more open--he's wiser in his intelligence than his
+rulers and lawgivers up above him.  He understands what I say, and I
+learn from him.  I don't learn much from our senators, or great lawyers,
+great doctors, professors, members of governing bodies--that lot.  Policy
+seems to petrify their minds when they 've got on an eminence.  Now
+explain it, if you can.'
+
+'Responsibility has a certain effect on them, no doubt,' said Weyburn.
+'Eminent station among men doesn't give a larger outlook.  Most of them
+confine their observation to their supports.  It happens to be one of the
+questions I have thought over.  Here in England, and particularly on a
+fortnight's run in the lowlands of Scotland once, I have, like you, my
+lady, come now and then across the people we call common, men and women,
+old wayside men especially; slow-minded, but hard in their grasp of
+facts, and ready to learn, and logical, large in their ideas, though
+going a roundabout way to express them.  They were at the bottom of
+wisdom, for they had in their heads the delicate sense of justice, upon
+which wisdom is founded.  That is what their rulers lack.  Unless we have
+the sense of justice abroad like a common air, there 's no peace, and no
+steady advance.  But these humble people had it.  They reasoned from it,
+and came to sound conclusions.  I felt them to be my superiors.  On the
+other hand, I have not felt the same with "our senators, rulers, and
+lawgivers."  They are for the most part deficient in the liberal mind.'
+
+'Ha! good, so far.  How do you account for it?' said Lady Charlotte.
+
+'I read it in this way: that the world being such as it is at present,
+demanding and rewarding with honours and pay special services, the men
+called great, who have risen to distinction, are not men of brains, but
+the men of aptitudes.  These men of aptitudes have a poor conception of
+the facts of life to meet the necessities of modern expansion.  They are
+serviceable in departments.  They go as they are driven, or they resist.
+In either case, they explain how it is that we have a world moving so
+sluggishly.  They are not the men of brains, the men of insight and
+outlook.  Often enough they are foes of the men of brains.'
+
+'Aptitudes; yes, that flashes a light into me,' said Lady Charlotte.
+'I see it better.  It helps to some comprehension of their muddle.  A man
+may be a first-rate soldier, doctor, banker--as we call the usurer now-a
+-days---or brewer, orator, anything that leads up to a figure-head, and
+prove a foolish fellow if you sound him.  I 've thought something like
+it, but wanted the word.  They say themselves, "Get to know, and you see
+with what little wisdom the world is governed!"  You explain how it is.
+I shall carry "aptitudes" away.'
+
+She looked straight at Weyburn.  'If I were a younger woman I could kiss
+you for it.'
+
+He bowed to her very gratefully.
+
+'Remember, my lady, there's a good deal of the Reformer in that
+definition.'
+
+'I stick to my class.  But they shall hear a true word when there's one
+abroad, I can tell them.  That reminds me---you ought to have asked; let
+me tell you I'm friendly with the Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey.  We had a
+wrestle for half an hour, and I threw him and helped him up, and he
+apologized for tumbling, and I subscribed to one of his charities, and
+gave up about the pew, but had an excuse for not sitting under the
+sermon.  A poor good creature.  He 's got the aptitudes for his office.
+He won't do much to save his Church.  I knew another who had his aptitude
+for the classics, and he has mounted.  He was my tutor when I was a girl.
+He was fond of declaiming passages from Lucian and Longus and Ovid.  One
+day he was at it with a piece out of Daphnis and Chloe, and I said, "Now
+translate."  He fetched a gurgle to say he couldn't, and I slapped his
+check.  Will you believe it? the man was indignant.  I told him, if he
+would like to know why I behaved in "that unmaidenly way," he had better
+apply at home.  I had no further intimations of his classical aptitudes;
+but he took me for a cleverer pupil than I was.  I hadn't a notion of the
+stuff he recited.  I read by his face.  That was my aptitude--always has
+been.  But think of the donkeys parents are when they let a man have a
+chance of pouring his barley-sugar and sulphur into the ears of a girl.
+Lots of girls have no latent heckles and prickles to match his villany.
+--There's my brother come back to breakfast from a round.  You and I 'll
+have a drive before lunch, and a ride or a stroll in the afternoon.
+There's a lot to see.  I mean you to get the whole place into your head.
+I 've ordered the phaeton, and you shall take the whip, with me beside
+you.  That's how my husband and I spent three-quarters of our honeymoon.'
+
+Each of the three breakfasted alone.
+
+They met on the terrace.  It was easily perceived that Lord Ormont stood
+expecting an assault at any instant; prepared also to encounter and do
+battle with his redoubtable sister.  Only he wished to defer the
+engagement.  And he was magnanimous: he was in the right, she in the
+wrong; he had no desire to grapple with her, fling and humiliate.  The
+Sphinx of Mrs. Pagnell had been communing with himself unwontedly during
+the recent weeks.
+
+What was the riddle of him?  That, he did not read.  But, expecting an
+assault, and relieved by his sister Charlotte's departure with Weyburn,
+he went to the drawing-room, where he had seen her sniff her strong
+suspicions of a lady coming to throne it.  Charlotte could believe that
+he flouted the world with a beautiful young woman on his arm; she would
+not believe him capable of doing that in his family home and native
+county; so, then, her shrewd wits had nothing or little to learn.  But
+her vehement fighting against facts; her obstinate aristocratic
+prejudices, which he shared; her stinger of a tongue: these in ebullition
+formed a discomforting prospect.  The battle might as well be conducted
+through the post.  Come it must!
+
+Even her writing of the pointed truths she would deliver was an
+unpleasant anticipation.  His ears heated.  Undoubtedly he could crush
+her.  Yet, supposing her to speak to his ears, she would say: 'You
+married a young woman, and have been foiling and fooling her ever since,
+giving her half a title to the name of wife, and allowing her in
+consequence to be wholly disfigured before the world--your family
+naturally her chief enemies, who would otherwise (Charlotte would
+proclaim it) have been her friends.  What! your intention was (one could
+hear Charlotte's voice) to smack the world in the face, and you smacked
+your young wife's instead!'
+
+His intention had been nothing of the sort.  He had married, in a foreign
+city, a young woman who adored him, whose features, manners, and carriage
+of her person satisfied his exacting taste in the sex; and he had
+intended to cast gossipy England over the rail and be a traveller for the
+remainder of his days.  And at the first she had acquiesced, tacitly
+accepted it as part of the contract.  He bore with the burden of an
+intolerable aunt of hers for her sake.  The two fell to work to conspire.
+Aminta 'tired of travelling,' Aminta must have a London house.  She
+continually expressed a hope that 'she might set her eyes on Steignton
+some early day.' In fact, she as good as confessed her scheme to plot for
+the acknowledged position of Countess of Ormont in the English social
+world.  That was a distinct breach of the contract.
+
+As to the babble of the London world about a 'very young wife,' he
+scorned it completely, but it belonged to the calculation.  'A very
+handsome young wife,' would lay commands on a sexagenarian vigilance
+while adding to his physical glory.  The latter he could forego among
+a people he despised.  It would, however, be an annoyance to stand
+constantly hand upon sword-hilt.  There was, besides, the conflict with
+his redoubtable sister.  He had no dread of it, in contemplation of the
+necessity; he could crush his Charlotte.  The objection was, that his
+Aminta should be pressing him to do it.  Examine the situation at
+present.  Aminta has all she needs--every luxury.  Her title as Countess
+of Ormont is not denied.  Her husband justly refuses to put foot into
+English society.  She, choosing to go where she may be received,
+dissociates herself from him, and he does not complain.  She does
+complain.  There is a difference between the two.
+
+He had always shunned the closer yoke with a woman because of these
+vexatious dissensions.  For not only are women incapable of practising,
+they cannot comprehend magnanimity.
+
+Lord Ormont's argumentative reverie to the above effect had been pursued
+over and over.  He knew that the country which broke his military career
+and ridiculed his newspaper controversy was unforgiven by him.  He did
+not reflect on the consequences of such an unpardoning spirit in its
+operation on his mind.
+
+If he could but have passed the injury, he would ultimately--for his
+claims of service were admitted--have had employment of some kind.
+Inoccupation was poison to him; travel juggled with his malady of
+restlessness; really, a compression of the warrior's natural forces.
+His Aminta, pushed to it by the woman Pagnell, declined to help him in
+softening the virulence of the disease.  She would not travel; she would
+fix in this London of theirs, and scheme to be hailed the accepted
+Countess of Ormont.  She manoeuvred; she threw him on the veteran
+soldier's instinct, and it resulted spontaneously that he manoeuvred.
+
+Hence their game of Pull, which occupied him a little, tickled him and
+amused.  The watching of her pretty infantile tactics amused him too much
+to permit of a sidethought on the cruelty of the part he played.  She had
+every luxury, more than her station by right of birth would have
+supplied.
+
+But he was astonished to find that his Aminta proved herself clever,
+though she had now and then said something pointed.  She was in awe of
+him: notwithstanding which, clearly she meant to win and pull him over.
+He did not dislike her for it; she might use her weapons to play her
+game; and that she should bewitch men--a, man like Morsfield--was not
+wonderful.  On the other hand, her conquest of Mrs. Lawrence Finchley
+scored tellingly: that was unaccountably queer.  What did Mrs. Lawrence
+expect to gain? the sage lord asked.  He had not known women devoid of a
+positive practical object of their own when they bestirred themselves to
+do a friendly deed.
+
+Thanks to her conquest of Mrs. Lawrence, his Aminta was gaining ground
+--daily she made an advance; insomuch that he had heard of himself as
+harshly blamed in London for not having countenanced her recent and
+rather imprudent move.  In other words, whenever she gave a violent tug
+at their game of Pull, he was expected to second it.  But the world of
+these English is too monstrously stupid in what it expects, for any of
+its extravagances to be followed by interjections.
+
+All the while he was trimming and rolling a field of armistice at
+Steignton, where they could discuss the terms he had a right to dictate,
+having yielded so far.  Would she be satisfied with the rule of his
+ancestral hall, and the dispensing of hospitalities to the county?
+No, one may guess: no woman is ever satisfied.  But she would have to
+relinquish her game, counting her good round half of the honours.
+Somewhat more, on the whole.  Without beating, she certainly had
+accomplished the miracle of bending him.  To time and a wife it is no
+disgrace for a man to bend.  It is the form of submission of the bulrush
+to the wind, of courtesy in the cavalier to a lady.
+
+'Oh, here you are, Rowsley,' Lady Charlotte exclaimed at the drawing room
+door.  'Well, and I don't like those Louis Quinze cabinets; and that
+modern French mantelpiece clock is hideous.  You seem to furnish in
+downright contempt of the women you invite to sit in the room.  Lord help
+the wretched woman playing hostess in such a pinchbeck bric-a-brac shop,
+if there were one!  She 's spared, at all events.'
+
+He stepped at slow march to one of the five windows.  Lady Charlotte went
+to another near by.  She called to Weyburn--
+
+'We had a regatta on that water when Lord Ormont came of age.  I took an
+oar in one of the boats, and we won a prize; and when I was landing I
+didn't stride enough to the spring-plank, and plumped in.'
+
+Some labourers of the estate passed in front.
+
+Lord Ormont gave out a broken laugh.  'See those fellows walk!  That 's
+the raw material of the famous English infantry.  They bend their knees
+five-and-forty degrees for every stride; and when you drill them out of
+that, they 're stiff as ramrods.  I gymnasticized them in my regiment.
+I'd have challenged any French regiment to out-walk or out-jump us, or
+any crack Tyrolese Jagers to out-climb, though we were cavalry.'
+
+'Yes, my lord, and exercised crack corps are wanted with us,' Weyburn
+replied.  'The English authorities are adverse to it, but it 's against
+nature--on the supposition that all Englishmen might enrol untrained in
+Caesar's pet legion.  Virgil shows knowledge of men when he says of the
+row-boat straining in emulation, 'Possunt quia posse videntur.''
+
+He talked on rapidly; he wondered that he did not hear Lady Charlotte
+exclaim at what she must be seeing.  From the nearest avenue a lady had
+issued.  She stood gazing at the house, erect--a gallant figure of a
+woman--one hand holding her parasol, the other at her hip.  He knew her.
+She was a few paces ahead of Mrs. Pagnell, beside whom a gentleman
+walked.
+
+The cry came: 'It's that man Morsfield!  Who brings that man Morsfield
+here?  He hunted me on the road; he seemed to be on the wrong scent.  Who
+are those women?  Rowsley, are your grounds open every day of the week?
+She threatens to come in!'
+
+Lady Charlotte had noted that the foremost and younger of 'those women'
+understood how to walk and how to dress to her shape and colour.  She
+inclined to think she was having to do with an intrepid foreign-bred
+minx.
+
+Aminta had been addressed by one of her companions, and had hastened
+forward.  It looked like the beginning of a run to enter the house.
+
+Mrs. Pagnell ran after her.  She ran cow-like.
+
+The earl's gorge rose at the spectacle Charlotte was observing.
+
+With Morsfield he could have settled accounts at any moment, despatching
+Aminta to her chamber for an hour.  He had, though he was offended, an
+honourable guess that she had not of her free will travelled with the man
+and brought him into the grounds.  It was the presence of the intolerable
+Pagnell under Charlotte's eyes which irritated him beyond the common
+anger he felt at Aminta's pursuit of him right into Steignton.  His mouth
+locked.  Lady Charlotte needed no speech from him for sign of the
+boiling; she was too wary to speak while that went on.
+
+He said to Weyburn, loud enough for his Charlotte to heir.  'Do me the
+favour to go to the Countess of Ormont.  Conduct her back to London.  You
+will say it is my command.  Inform Mr. Morsfield, with my compliments, I
+regret I have no weapons here.  I understand him to complain of having to
+wait.  I shall be in town three days from this date.'
+
+'My lord,' said Mr. Weyburn; and actually he did mean to supplicate.  He
+could imagine seeing Lord Ormont's eyebrows rising to alpine heights.
+
+Lady Charlotte seized his arm.
+
+'Go at once.  Do as you are told.  I'll have your portmanteau packed and
+sent after you--the phaeton's out in the yard--to Rowsley, or Ashead, or
+Dornton, wherever they put up.  Now go, or we shall have hot work.  Keep
+your head on, and go.'
+
+He went, without bowing.
+
+Lady Charlotte rang for the footman.
+
+The earl and she watched the scene on the sward below the terrace.
+
+Aminta listened to Weyburn.  Evidently there was no expostulation.
+
+But it was otherwise with Mrs. Pagnell.  She flung wild arms of a
+semaphore signalling national events.  She sprang before Aminta to stop
+her retreat, and stamped and gibbed, for sign that she would not be
+driven.  She fell away to Mr. Morsfield, for simple hearing of her
+plaint.  He appeared emphatic.  There was a passage between him and
+Weyburn.
+
+'I suspect you've more than your match in young Weyburn, Mr. Morsfield,'
+Lady Charlotte said, measuring them as they stood together.  They turned
+at last.
+
+'You shall drive back to town with me, Rowsley,' said the fighting dame.
+
+She breathed no hint of her triumph.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A SCENE ON THE ROAD BACK
+
+After refusing to quit the grounds of Steignton, in spite of the
+proprietor, Mrs. Pagnell burst into an agitation to have them be at
+speed, that they might 'shake the dust of the place from the soles of
+their feet'; and she hurried past Aminta and Lord Ormont's insolent
+emissary, carrying Mr. Morsfield beside her, perforce of a series of
+imperiously-toned vacuous questions, to which he listened in rigid
+politeness, with the ejaculation steaming off from time to time, 'A
+scandal!'
+
+He shot glances behind him.
+
+Mrs. Pagnell was going too fast.  She, however, world not hear of a halt,
+and she was his main apology for being present; he was excruciatingly
+attached to the horrid woman.
+
+Weyburn spoke the commonplaces about regrets to Aminta.
+
+'Believe me, it's long since I have been so happy,' she said.
+
+She had come out of her stupefaction, and she wore no theatrical looks of
+cheerfulness.
+
+'I regret that you should be dragged away.  But, if you say you do not
+mind, it will be pleasant to me.  I can excuse Lord Ormont's anger.
+I was ignorant of his presence here.  I thought him in Paris.  I supposed
+the place empty.  I wished to see it once.  I travelled as the niece of
+Mrs. Pagnell.  She is a little infatuated.  .  .  .  Mr. Morsfield heard
+of our expedition through her.  I changed the route.  I was not in want
+of a defender.  I could have defended myself in case of need.  We slept
+at Ashead, two hours from Steignton.  He and a friend accompanied us, not
+with my consent.  Lord Ormont could not have been aware of that.  These
+accidental circumstances happen.  There may be pardonable intentions on
+all sides.'
+
+She smiled.  Her looks were open, and her voice light and spirited;
+though the natural dark rose-glow was absent from her olive cheeks.
+
+Weyburn puzzled over the mystery of so volatile a treatment of a serious
+matter, on the part of a woman whose feelings he had reason to know were
+quick and deep.  She might be acting, as women so cleverly do.
+
+It could hardly be acting when she pointed to peeps of scenery, with a
+just eye for landscape.
+
+'You leave us for Switzerland very soon?' she said.
+
+'The Reversion I have been expecting has fallen in, besides my
+inheritance.  My mother was not to see the school.  But I shall not
+forget her counsels.  I can now make my purchase of the house and
+buildings, and buy out my partner at the end of a year.  My boys are
+jumping to start.  I had last week a letter from Emile.'
+
+'Dear little Emile!'
+
+'You like him?'
+
+'I could use a warmer word.  He knew me when I was a girl.'
+
+She wound the strings of his heart suddenly tense, and they sang to their
+quivering.
+
+'You will let me hear of you, Mr. Weyburn?'
+
+'I will write.  Oh! certainly I will write, if I am told you are
+interested in our doings, Lady Ormont.'
+
+'I will let you know that I am.'
+
+'I shall be happy in writing full reports.'
+
+'Every detail, I beg.  All concerning the school.  Help me to feel I am a
+boarder.  I catch up an old sympathy I had for girls and boys.  For boys!
+any boys! the dear monkey boys! cherub monkeys!  They are so funny.  I am
+sure I never have laughed as I did at Selina Collett's report, through
+her brother, of the way the boys tried to take to my name; and their
+sneezing at it, like a cat at a deceitful dish. "Aminta"--was that their
+way?'
+
+'Something--the young rascals!'
+
+'But please repeat it as you heard them.'
+
+'" Aminta."'
+
+He subdued the mouthing.
+
+'It didn't, offend me at all.  It is one of my amusements to think of it.
+But after a time they liked the name; and then how did they say it?'
+
+He had the beloved Aminta on his lips.
+
+He checked it, or the power to speak it failed.  She drew in a sharp
+breath.
+
+'I hope your boys will have plenty of fun in them.  They will have you
+for a providence and a friend.  I should wish to propose to visit your
+school some day.  You will keep me informed whether the school has
+vacancies.  You will, please, keep me regularly informed?'
+
+She broke into sobs.
+
+Weyburn talked on of the school, for a cover to the resuming of her
+fallen mask, as he fancied it.
+
+She soon recovered, all save a steady voice for converse, and begged him
+to proceed, and spoke in the flow of the subject; but the quaver of her
+tones was a cause of further melting.  The tears poured, she could not
+explain why, beyond assuring him that they were no sign of unhappiness.
+Winds on the great waters against a strong tidal current beat up the wave
+and shear and wing the spray, as in Aminta's bosom.  Only she could know
+that it was not her heart weeping, though she had grounds for a woman's
+weeping.  But she alone could be aware of her heart's running counter to
+the tears.
+
+Her agitation was untimely.  Both Mrs. Pagnell and Mr. Morsfield observed
+emotion at work.  And who could wonder?  A wife denied the admittance to
+her husband's house by her husband!  The most beautiful woman of her time
+relentlessly humiliated, ordered to journey back the way she had come.
+
+They had reached the gate of the park, and had turned.
+
+'A scandal!'
+
+Mr. Morsfield renewed his interjection vehemently, for an apology to his
+politeness in breaking from Mrs. Pagnell.
+
+Joining the lady, whose tears were of the nerves, he made offer of his
+devotion in any shape; and she was again in the plight to which a
+desperado can push a woman of the gentle kind.  She had the fear of
+provoking a collision if she reminded him, that despite her entreaties,
+he had compelled her, seconded by her aunt as he had been, to submit to
+his absurd protection on the walk across the park.
+
+He seemed quite regardless of the mischief he had created; and,
+reflecting upon how it served his purpose, he might well be.  Intemperate
+lover, of the ancient pattern, that he was, his aim to win the woman
+acknowledged no obstacle in the means.  Her pitiable position appealed to
+the best of him; his inordinate desire of her aroused the worst.  It was,
+besides, an element of his coxcombry, that he should, in apeing the
+utterly inconsiderate, rush swiftly to impersonate it when his passions
+were cast on a die.
+
+Weyburn he ignored as a stranger, an intruder, an inferior.
+
+Aminta's chariot was at the gate.
+
+She had to resign herself to the chances of a clash of men, and, as there
+were two to one, she requested help of Weyburn's hand, that he might be
+near her.
+
+A mounted gentleman, smelling parasite in his bearing, held the bridle of
+Morsfield's horse.
+
+The ladies having entered the chariot, Morsfield sprang to the saddle,
+and said: 'You, sir, had better stretch your legs to the inn.'
+
+'There is room for you, Mr. Weyburn,' said Aminta.
+
+Mrs. Pagnell puffed.
+
+'I can't think we've room, my dear.  I want that bit of seat in front for
+my feet.'
+
+Morsfield kicked at his horse's flanks, and between Weyburn and the
+chariot step, cried: 'Back, sir!'
+
+His reins were seized; the horse reared, the unexpected occurred.
+
+Weyburn shouted 'Off!' to the postillion, and jumped in.
+
+Morsfield was left to the shaking of a dusty coat, while the chariot
+rolled its gentle course down the leafy lane into the high-road.
+
+His friend had seized the horse's bridle-reins; and he remarked: 'I say,
+Dolf, we don't prosper to-day.'
+
+'He pays for it!' said Morsfield, foot in stirrup.  'You'll take him and
+trounce him at the inn.  I don't fight with servants.  Better game.  One
+thing, Cumnock: the fellow's clever at the foils.'
+
+'Foils to the devil!  If I tackle the fellow, it won't be with the
+buttons.  But how has he pushed in?'
+
+Morsfield reported 'the scandal!' in sharp headings.
+
+'Turned her away.  Won't have her enter his house--grandest woman in all
+England!  Sent his dog to guard.  Think of it for an insult!  It's insult
+upon insult.  I 've done my utmost to fire his marrow.  I did myself a
+good turn by following her up and entering that park with her.  I shall
+succeed; there 's a look of it.  All I have--my life--is that woman's.
+I never knew what this devil's torture was before I saw her.'
+
+His friend was concerned for his veracity.  'Amy!'
+
+'A common spotted snake.  She caught me young, and she didn't carry me
+off, as I mean to carry off this glory of her sex--she is: you've seen
+her!--and free her, and devote every minute of the rest of my days to
+her.  I say I must win the woman if I stop at nothing, or I perish; and
+if it 's a failure, exit 's my road.  I 've watched every atom she
+touched in a room, and would have heaped gold to have the chairs, tables,
+cups, carpets, mine.  I have two short letters written with her hand.
+I 'd give two of my estates for two more.  If I were a beggar, and kept
+them, I should be rich.  Relieve me of that dog, and I toss you a
+thousand-pound note, and thank you from my soul, Cumnock.  You know
+what hangs on it.  Spur, you dolt, or she'll be out of sight.'
+
+They cantered upon application of the spur.  Captain Cumnock was an
+impecunious fearless rascal, therefore a parasite and a bully duellist;
+a thick-built north-countryman; a burly ape of the ultra-elegant; hunter,
+gamester, hard-drinker, man of pleasure.  His known readiness to fight
+was his trump-card at a period when the declining custom of the duel
+taxed men's courage to brave the law and the Puritan in the interests of
+a privileged and menaced aristocracy.  An incident like the present was
+the passion in the dice-box to Cumnock.  Morsfield was of the order of
+men who can be generous up to the pitch of their desires.  Consequently,
+the world accounted him open-handed and devoted when enamoured.  Few men
+liked him; he was a hero with some women.  The women he trampled on; the
+men he despised.  To the lady of his choice he sincerely offered his
+fortune and his life for the enjoyment of her favour.  His ostentation
+and his offensive daring combined the characteristics of the peacock and
+the hawk.  Always near upon madness, there were occasions when he could
+eclipse the insane.  He had a ringing renown in his class.
+
+Chariot and horsemen arrived at the Roebuck Arms, at the centre of the
+small town of Ashead, on the line from Steignton through Rowsley.  The
+pair of cavaliers dismounted and hustled Weyburn in assisting the ladies
+to descend.
+
+The ladies entered the inn; they declined refection of any sort.  They
+had biscuits and sweetmeats, and looked forward to tea at a farther
+stage.  Captain Cumnock stooped to their verdict on themselves, with
+marvel at the quantity of flesh they managed to put on their bones from
+such dieting.
+
+'By your courtesy, sir, a word with you in the inn yard, if you please,'
+he said to Weyburn in the inn-porch.
+
+Weyburn answered, 'Half a minute,' and was informed that it was exactly
+the amount of time the captain could afford to wait.
+
+Weyburn had seen the Steignton phaeton and coachman in the earl's light-
+blue livery.  It was at his orders, he heard.  He told the coachman to
+expect hire shortly, and he followed the captain, with a heavy trifle of
+suspicion that some brew was at work.  He said to Aminta in the passage--
+
+'You have your settlement with the innkeeper.  Don't, I beg, step into
+the chariot till you see me.'
+
+'Anything?' said she.
+
+'Only prudence.'
+
+'Our posting horses will be harnessed soon, I hope.  I burn to get away.'
+
+Mrs. Pagnell paid the bill at the bar of the inn.  Morsfield poured out
+for the injured countess or no-countess a dram of the brandy of passion,
+under the breath.
+
+'Deny that you singled me once for your esteem.  Hardest-hearted of the
+women of earth and dearest! deny that you gave me reason to hope--and
+now!  I have ridden in your track all this way for the sight of you, as
+you know, and you kill me with frost.  Yes, I rejoice that we were seen
+together.  Look on me.  I swear I perish for one look of kindness.  You
+have been shamefully used, madam.'
+
+'It seems to me I am being so,' said Aminta, cutting herself loose from
+the man of the close eyes that wavered as they shot the dart.
+
+Her action was too decided for him to follow her up under the observation
+of the inn windows and a staring street.
+
+Mrs. Pagnell came out.  She went boldly to Morsfield and they conferred.
+He was led by her to the chariot, where she pointed to a small padded
+slab of a seat back to the horses.  Turning to the bar, he said:--
+My friend will look to my horse.  Both want watering and a bucketful.
+There!'--he threw silver--'I have to protect the ladies.'
+
+Aminta was at the chariot door talking to her aunt inside.
+
+'But I say I have been insulted--is the word--more than enough by Lord
+Ormont to-day!' Mrs. Pagnell exclaimed; 'and I won't, I positively refuse
+to ride up to London with any servant of his.  It's quite sufficient that
+it's his servant.  I'm not titled, but I 'in not quite dirt.  Mr.
+Morsfield kindly offers his protection, and I accept.  He is company.'
+
+Nodding and smirking at Morsfield's approach, she entreated Aminta to
+step up and in, for the horses were coming out of the yard.
+
+Aminta looked round.  Weyburn was perceived; and Morsfield's features
+cramped at thought of a hitch in the plot.
+
+'Possession,' Mrs. Pagnell murmured significantly.  She patted the seat.
+Morsfield sprang to Weyburn's place.
+
+That was witnessed by Aminta and Weyburn.  She stepped to consult him.
+He said to the earl's coachman--a young fellow with a bright eye for
+orders--
+
+'Drive as fast as you can pelt for Dornton.  I'm doing my lord's
+commands.'
+
+'Trust yourself to me, madam.' His hand stretched for Aminta to mount.
+She took it without a word and climbed to the seat.  A clatter of hoofs
+rang out with the crack of the whip.  They were away behind a pair of
+steppers that could go the pace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE PURSUERS
+
+For promptitude, the lady, the gentleman, and the coachman were in such
+unison as to make it a reasonable deduction that the flight had been
+concerted.
+
+Never did any departure from the Roebuck leave so wide-mouthed a body of
+spectators.  Mrs. Pagnell's shrieks of 'Stop, oh! stop!' to the backs of
+the coachman and Aminta were continued until they were far down the
+street.  She called to the innkeeper, called to the landlady and to
+invisible constables for help.  But her pangs were childish compared with
+Morsfield's, who, with the rage of a conceited schemer tricked and the
+fury of a lover beholding the rape of his beautiful, bellowed impotently
+at Weyburn and the coachman out of hearing, 'Stop! you!'  He was in the
+state of men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations, and he
+shot loud oaths after them, shook his fist, cursed his friend Cumnock,
+whose name he vociferated as a summons to him,--generally the baffled
+plotter misconducted himself to an extreme degree, that might have
+apprised Mrs. Pagnell of a more than legitimate disappointment on his
+part.
+
+Pursuit was one of the immediate ideas which rush forward to look
+back woefully on impediments and fret to fever over the tardiness of
+operations.  A glance at the thing of wrinkles receiving orders to buckle
+at his horses and pursue convinced them of the hopelessness; and
+Morsfield was pricked to intensest hatred of the woman by hearing the
+dire exclamation, 'One night, and her character's gone!'
+
+'Be quiet, ma'am, if you please, or nothing can be done,' he cried.
+
+'I tell you, Mr. Morsfield--don't you see?--he has thrown them
+together.  It is Lord Ormont's wicked conspiracy to rid himself of her.
+A secretary!  He'll beat any one alive in plots.  She can't show her face
+in London after this, if you don't overtake her.  And she might have seen
+Lord Ormont's plot to ruin her.  He tired of her, and was ashamed of her
+inferior birth to his own, after the first year, except on the Continent,
+where she had her rights.  Me he never forgave for helping make him the
+happy man he might have been in spite of his age.  For she is lovely!
+But it's worse for a lovely woman with a damaged reputation.  And that 's
+his cunning.  How she could be so silly as to play into it!  She can't
+have demeaned herself to look on that secretary!  I said from the first
+he seemed as if thrown into her way for a purpose.  But she has pride: my
+niece Aminta has pride.  She might well have listened to flatterers--she
+had every temptation--if it hadn't been for her pride.  It may save her
+yet.  However good-looking, she will remember her dignity--unless he's a
+villain.  Runnings away!  drivings together!  inns oh!  the story over
+London!  I do believe she has a true friend in you, Mr. Morsfield; and I
+say, as I have said before, the sight of a devoted admirer would have
+brought any husband of more than sixty to his senses, if he hadn't hoped
+a catastrophe and determined on it.  Catch them we can't, unless she
+repents and relents; and prayers for that are our only resource.  Now,
+start, man, do!'
+
+The postillion had his foot in position to spring.  Morsfield bawled
+Cumnock's name, and bestrode his horse.  Captain Cumnock emerged from the
+inn-yard with a dubitative step, pressing a handkerchief to his nose,
+blinking, and scrutinizing the persistent fresh stains on it.
+
+Stable-boys were at the rear.  These, ducking and springing, surcharged
+and copious exponents of the play they had seen, related, for the benefit
+of the town, how that the two gentlemen had exchanged words in the yard,
+which were about beastly pistols, which the slim gentleman would have
+none of; and then the big one trips up, like dancing, to the other one
+and flicks him a soft clap on the check--quite friendly, you may say;
+and before he can square to it, the slim one he steps his hind leg half a
+foot back, and he drives a straight left like lightning off the shoulder
+slick on to t' other one's nob, and over he rolls, like a cart with the
+shafts up down a bank; and he' a been washing his 'chops' and threatening
+bullets ever since.
+
+The exact account of the captain's framework in the process of the fall
+was graphically portrayed in our blunt and racy vernacular, which a
+society nourished upon Norman-English and English-Latin banishes from
+print, largely to its impoverishment, some think.
+
+By the time the primary narrative of the encounter in the inn yard had
+given ground for fancy and ornament to present it in yet more luscious
+dress, Lord Ormont's phaeton was a good mile on the road.  Morsfield and
+Captain Cumnock--the latter inquisitive of the handkerchief pressed
+occasionally at his nose--trotted on tired steeds along dusty wheel-
+tracks.  Mrs. Pagnell was the solitary of the chariot, having a horrid
+couple of loaded pistols to intimidate her for her protection, and the
+provoking back view of a regularly jogging mannikin under a big white hat
+with blue riband, who played the part of Time in dragging her along, with
+worse than no countenance for her anxieties.
+
+News of the fugitives was obtained at the rampant Red Lion in Dudsworth,
+nine miles on along the London road, to the extent that the Earl of
+Ormont's phaeton, containing a lady and a gentleman, had stopped there
+a minute to send back word to Steignton of their comfortable progress,
+and expectations of crossing the borders into Hampshire before sunset.
+Morsfield and Cumnock shrugged at the bumpkin artifice.  They left their
+line of route to be communicated to the chariot, and chose, with
+practised acumen, that very course, which was the main road, and rewarded
+them at the end of half an hour with sight of the Steignton phaeton.
+
+But it was returning.  A nearer view showed it empty of the couple.
+
+Morsfield bade the coachman pull up, and he was readily obeyed.  Answers
+came briskly.
+
+Although provincial acting is not of the high class which conceals the
+art, this man's look beside him and behind him at vacant seats had
+incontestable evidence in support of his declaration, that the lady and
+gentleman had gone on by themselves: the phaeton was a box of flown
+birds.
+
+'Where did you say they got out, you dog?' said Cumnock.
+
+The coachman stood up to spy a point below.  'Down there at the bottom of
+the road, to the right, where there's a stile across the meadows, making
+a short cut by way of a bridge over the river to Busley and North
+Tothill, on the high-road to Hocklebourne.  The lady and gentleman
+thought they 'd walk for a bit of exercise the remains of the journey.'
+
+'Can't prove the rascal's a liar,' Cumnock said to Morsfield, who rallied
+him savagely on his lucky escape from another knock-down blow, and tossed
+silver on the seat, and said--
+
+'We 'll see if there is a stile.'
+
+'You'll see the stile, sir,' rejoined the man, and winked at their backs.
+
+Both cavaliers, being famished besides baffled, were in sour tempers,
+expecting to see just the dead wooden stile, and see it as a grin at
+them.  Cumnock called on Jove to witness that they had been donkeys
+enough to forget to ask the driver how far round on the road it was to
+the other end of the cross-cut.
+
+Morsfield, entirely objecting to asinine harness with him, mocked at his
+invocation and intonation of the name of Jove.
+
+Cumnock was thereupon stung to a keen recollection of the allusion to his
+knock-down blow, and he retorted that there were some men whose wit was
+the parrot's.
+
+Morsfield complimented him over the exhibition of a vastly superior and
+more serviceable wit, in losing sight of his antagonist after one trial
+of him.
+
+Cumnock protested that the loss of time was caused by his friend's
+dalliance with the Venus in the chariot.
+
+Morsfield's gall seethed at a flying picture of Mrs. Pagnell, coupled
+with the retarding reddened handkerchief business, and he recommended
+Cumnock to pay court to the old woman, as the only chance he would have
+of acquaintanceship with the mother of Love.
+
+Upon that Cumnock confessed in humility to his not being wealthy.
+Morsfield looked a willingness to do the deed he might have to pay for in
+tenderer places than the pocket, and named the head as a seat of poverty
+with him.
+
+Cumnock then yawned a town fop's advice to a hustling street passenger to
+apologize for his rudeness before it was too late.  Whereat Morsfield,
+certain that his parasitic thrasyleon apeing coxcomb would avoid
+extremities, mimicked him execrably.
+
+Now this was a second breach of the implied convention existing among the
+exquisitely fine-bred silken-slender on the summits of our mundane
+sphere, which demands of them all, that they respect one another's
+affectations.  It is commonly done, and so the costly people of a single
+pattern contrive to push forth, flatteringly to themselves, luxuriant
+shoots of individuality in their orchidean glass-house.  A violation of
+the rule is a really deadly personal attack.  Captain Cumnock was
+particularly sensitive regarding it, inasmuch as he knew himself not the
+natural performer he strove to be, and a mimicry affected him as a
+haunting check.
+
+He burst out: 'Damned if I don't understand why you're hated by men and
+women both!'
+
+Morsfield took a shock.  'Infernal hornet!' he muttered; for his
+conquests had their secret history.
+
+'May and his wife have a balance to pay will trip you yet, you 'll find.'
+
+'Reserve your wrath, sir, for the man who stretched you on your back.'
+
+The batteries of the two continued exchangeing redhot shots, with the
+effect, that they had to call to mind they were looking at the stile.
+A path across a buttercup meadow was beyond it.  They were damped to
+some coolness by the sight.
+
+'Upon my word, the trick seems neat!' said Cumnock staring at the
+pastoral curtain.
+
+'Whose trick?' he was asked sternly.
+
+'Here or there 's not much matter; they 're off, unless they 're under a
+hedge laughing.'
+
+An ache of jealousy and spite was driven through the lover, who groaned,
+and presently said--
+
+'I ride on.  That old woman can follow.  I don't want to hear her
+gibberish.  We've lost the game--there 's no reckoning the luck.  If
+there's a chance, it's this way.  It smells a trick.  He and she--by all
+the devils!  It has been done in my family--might have been done again.
+Tell the men on the plain they can drive home.  There's a hundred-pound
+weight on your tongue for silence.'
+
+Cumnock cried: 'But we needn't be parting, Dolf!  Stick together.  Bad
+luck's not repeated every day. Keep heart for the good.'
+
+'My heart's shattered, Cumnock.  I say it's impossible she can love a
+husband twice her age, who treats her--you 've seen.  Contempt of that
+lady!
+
+By heaven! once in my power, I swear she would have been sacred to me.
+But she would have been compelled to face the public and take my hand.
+I swear she would have been congratulated on the end of her sufferings.
+Worship!--that's what I feel.  No woman ever alive had eyes in her head
+like that lady's.  I repeat her name ten times every night before I go to
+sleep.  If I had her hand, no, not one kiss would I press on it without
+her sanction.  I could be in love with her cruelty, if only I had her
+near me.  I 've lost her--by the Lord, I 've lost her!'
+
+'Pro tem.,' said the captain.  'A plate of red beef and a glass of port
+wine alters the view.  Too much in the breast, too little in the belly,
+capsizes lovers.  Old story.  Horses that ought to be having a mash
+between their ribs make riders despond.  Say, shall we back to the town
+behind us, or on?  Back's the safest, if the chase is up.'
+
+Morsfield declared himself incapable of turning and meeting that chariot.
+He sighed heavily.  Cumnock offered to cheer him with a song of Captain
+Chanter's famous collection, if he liked; but Morsfield gesticulated
+abhorrence, and set out at a trot.  Song in defeat was a hiss of derision
+to him.
+
+He had failed.  Having failed, he for the first time perceived the
+wildness of a plot that had previously appeared to him as one of the
+Yorkshire Morsfields' moves to win an object.  Traditionally they stopped
+at nothing.  There would have been a sunburst of notoriety in the capture
+and carrying off of the beautiful Countess of Ormont.
+
+She had eluded him during the downward journey to Steignton.  He came on
+her track at the village at the junction of the roads above Ashead, and
+thence, confiding in the half-connivance or utter stupidity of the fair
+one's duenna, despatched a mounted man-servant to his coachman and
+footmen, stationed ten miles behind, with orders that they should drive
+forthwith to the great plain, and be ready at a point there for two
+succeeding days.  That was the plot, promptly devised upon receipt of
+Mrs. Pagnell's communication; for the wealthy man of pleasure was a
+strategist fit to be a soldier, in dexterity not far from rivalling the
+man by whom he had been outdone.
+
+An ascetic on the road to success, he dedicated himself to a term of hard
+drinking under a reverse; and the question addressed to the chief towns
+in the sketch counties his head contained was, which one near would be
+likely to supply the port wine for floating him through garlanding dreams
+of possession most tastily to blest oblivion.
+
+He was a lover, nevertheless, honest in his fashion, and meant not worse
+than to pull his lady through a mire, and wash her with Morsfield soap,
+and crown her, and worship.  She was in his blood, about him, above him;
+he had plunged into her image, as into deeps that broke away in
+phosphorescent waves on all sides, reflecting every remembered, every
+imagined, aspect of the adored beautiful woman piercing him to extinction
+with that last look of her at the moment of flight.
+
+Had he been just a trifle more sincere in the respect he professed for
+his lady's duenna, he would have turned on the road to Dornton and a
+better fortune.  Mrs. Pagnell had now become the ridiculous Paggy of Mrs.
+Lawrence Finchley and her circle for the hypocritical gentleman; and he
+remarked to Captain Cumnock, when their mutual trot was established:
+'Paggy enough for me for a month--good Lord!  I can't stand another dose
+of her by herself.'
+
+'It's a bird that won't roast or boil or stew,' said the captain.
+
+They were observed trotting along below by Lord Ormont's groom of the
+stables on promotion, as he surveyed the country from the chalk-hill rise
+and brought the phaeton to a stand, Jonathan Boon, a sharp lad, whose
+comprehension was a little muddled by 'the rights of it' in this
+adventure.  He knew, however, that he did well to follow the directions
+of one who was in his lordship's pay, and stretched out the fee with the
+air of a shake of the hand, and had a look of the winning side, moreover.
+A born countryman could see that.
+
+Boon watched the pair of horsemen trotting to confusion, and clicked in
+his cheek.  The provincial of the period when coaches were beginning to
+be threatened by talk of new-fangled rails was proud to boast of his
+outwitting Londoners on material points; and Boon had numerous tales of
+how it had been done, to have the laugh of fellows thinking themselves
+such razors.  They compensated him for the slavish abasement of his whole
+neighbourhood under the hectoring of the grand new manufacture of wit in
+London:--the inimitable Metropolitan PUN, which came down to the country
+by four-in-hand, and stopped all other conversation wherever it was
+reported, and would have the roar--there was no resisting it.  Indeed,
+to be able to see the thing smartly was an entry into community with the
+elect of the district; and when the roaring ceased and the thing was
+examined, astonishment at the cleverness of it, and the wonderful
+shallowness of the seeming deep hole, and the unexhausted bang it had to
+go off like a patent cracker, fetched it out for telling over again; and
+up went the roar, and up it went at home and in stable-yards, and at the
+net puffing of churchwardens on a summer's bench, or in a cricket-booth
+after a feast, or round the old inn's taproom fine.  The pun, the
+wonderful bo-peep of double meanings darting out to surprise and smack
+one another from behind words of the same sound, sometimes the same
+spelling, overwhelmed the provincial mind with awe of London's occult and
+prolific genius.
+
+Yet down yonder you may behold a pair of London gentlemen trotting along
+on as fine a fool's errand as ever was undertaken by nincompoops bearing
+a scaled letter, marked urgent, to a castle, and the request in it that
+the steward would immediately upon perusal down with their you-know-what
+and hoist them and birch them a jolly two dozen without parley.
+
+Boon smacked his leg, and then drove ahead merrily.
+
+For this had happened to his knowledge: the gentleman accompanying the
+lady had refused to make anything of a halt at the Red Lion, and had said
+he was sure there would be a small public-house at the outskirts of the
+town, for there always was one; and he proved right, and the lady and he
+had descended at the sign of the Jolly Cricketers, and Boon had driven on
+for half an hour by order.
+
+This, too, had happened, external to Boon's knowledge: the lady and the
+gentleman had witnessed, through the small diamond window-panes of the
+Jolly Cricketers' parlour, the passing-by of the two horsemen in pursuit
+of them; and the gentleman had stopped the chariot coming on some fifteen
+minutes later, but he did not do it at the instigation of the lady.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+AT THE SIGN OF THE JOLLY CRICKETERS
+
+The passing by of the pair of horsemen, who so little suspected the
+treasure existing behind the small inn's narrow window did homage in
+Aminta's mind to her protector's adroitness.  Their eyes met without a
+smile, though they perceived the grisly comic of the incident.  Their
+thoughts were on the chariot to follow.
+
+Aminta had barely uttered a syllable since the start of the flight from
+Ashead.  She had rocked in a swing between sensation and imagination,
+exultant, rich with the broad valley of the plain and the high green
+waves of the downs at their giant's bound in the flow of curves and sunny
+creases to the final fling-off of the dip on sky.  Here was a twisted
+hawthorn carved clean to the way of the wind; a sheltered clump of
+chestnuts holding their blossoms up, as with a thousand cresset-clasping
+hands; here were grasses that nodded swept from green to grey; flowers
+yellow, white, and blue, significant of a marvellous unknown through the
+gates of colour; and gorse-covers giving out the bird, squares of young
+wheat, a single fallow threaded by a hare, and cottage gardens, shadowy
+garths, wayside flint-heap, woods of the mounds and the dells, fluttering
+leaves, clouds: all were swallowed, all were the one unworried
+significance.  Scenery flew, shifted, returned; again the line of the
+downs raced and the hollows reposed simultaneously.  They were the same
+in change to an eye grown older; they promised, as at the first,
+happiness for recklessness.  The whole woman was urged to delirious
+recklessness in happiness, and she drank the flying scenery as an
+indication, a likeness, an encouragement.
+
+When her wild music of the blood had fallen to stillness with the stopped
+wheels, she was in the musky, small, low room of the diamond window-
+panes, at her companion's disposal for what he might deem the best: he
+was her fate.  But the more she leaned on a man of self-control, the more
+she admired; and an admiration that may not speak itself to the object
+present drops inward, stirs the founts; and if these are repressed, the
+tenderness which is not allowed to weep will drown self-pity, hardening
+the woman to summon scruples in relation to her unworthiness.  He might
+choose to forget, but the more she admired, the less could her feminine
+conscience permit of an utter or of any forgetfulness that she was not
+the girl Browny, whom he once loved--perhaps loved now, under some
+illusion of his old passion for her--does love now, ill-omened as he is
+in that!  She read him by her startled reading of her own heart, and she
+constrained her will to keep from doing, saying, looking aught that would
+burden without gracing his fortunes.  For, as she felt, a look, a word, a
+touch would do the mischief; she had no resistance behind her cold face,
+only the physical scruple, which would become the moral unworthiness if
+in any way she induced him to break his guard and blow hers to shreds.
+An honourable conscience before the world has not the same certificate in
+love's pure realm.  They are different kingdoms.  A girl may be of both;
+a married woman, peering outside the narrow circle of her wedding-ring,
+should let her eyelids fall and the unseen fires consume her.
+
+Their common thought was now, Will the chariot follow?
+
+What will he do if it comes? was an unformed question with Aminta.
+
+He had formed and not answered it, holding himself, sincerely at the
+moment, bound to her wishes.  Near the end of Ashead main street she had
+turned to him in her seat beside the driver, and conveyed silently, with
+the dental play of her tongue and pouted lips, 'No title.'
+
+Upon that sign, waxen to those lips, he had said to the driver, 'You took
+your orders from Lady Charlotte?
+
+And the reply, 'Her ladyship directed me sir, exonerated Lord Ormont so
+far.
+
+Weyburn remembered then a passage of one of her steady looks, wherein an
+oracle was mute.  He tried several of the diviner's shots to interpret
+it: she was beyond his reach.  She was in her blissful delirium of the
+flight, and reproached him with giving her the little bit less to resent
+--she who had no sense of resentment, except the claim on it to excuse.
+
+Their landlady entered the room to lay the cloth for tea and eggs.  She
+made offer of bacon as well, homecured.  She was a Hampshire woman, and
+understood the rearing of pigs.  Her husband had been a cricketer, and
+played for his county.  He didn't often beat Hampshire!  They had a good
+garden of vegetables, and grass-land enough for two cows.  They made
+their own bread, their own butter, but did not brew.
+
+Weyburn pronounced for a plate of her home-cured.  She had children, the
+woman told him--two boys and a girl.  Her husband wished for a girl.  Her
+eldest boy wished to be a sailor, and would walk miles to a pond to sail
+bits of wood on it, though there had never been a sea-faring man in her
+husband's family or her own.  She agreed with the lady and gentleman that
+it might be unwise to go contrary to the boy's bent.  Going to school or
+coming home, a trickle of water would stop him.
+
+Aminta said to her companion in French, 'Have you money?'
+
+She chased his blood.  'Some: sufficient.  I think.'  It stamped their
+partnership.
+
+'I have but a small amount.  Aunt was our paymaster.  We will buy the
+little boy a boat to sail.  You are pale.'
+
+'I 've no notion of it.'
+
+'Something happened it Ashead.'
+
+'It would not have damaged my complexion.'
+
+He counted his money.  Aminta covertly handed him her purse.  Their
+fingers touched.  The very minor circumstance of their landlady being in
+the room dammed a flood.
+
+Her money and his amounted to seventeen pounds.  The sum-total was a
+symbol of days that were a fiery wheel.
+
+Honour and blest adventure might travel together two days or three, he
+thought.  If the chariot did not pass:--Lord Ormont had willed it.  A man
+could not be said to swerve in his duty when acting to fulfil the
+master's orders, and Mrs. Pagnell was proved a hoodwinked duenna, and
+Morsfield was in the air.  The breathing Aminta had now a common purse
+with her first lover.  For three days or more they were, it would seem,
+to journey together, alone together: the prosecution of his duty imposed
+it on him.  Sooth to say, Weyburn knew that a spice of passion added to a
+bowl of reason makes a sophist's mess; but he fancied an absolute
+reliance on Aminta's dignity, and his respect for her was another
+barrier.  He begged the landlady's acceptance of two shillings for her
+boy's purchase of a boat, advising her to have him taught early to swim.
+Both he and Aminta had a feeling that they could be helpful in some
+little things on the road if the chariot did not pass.
+
+Justification began to speak loudly against the stopping of the chariot
+if it did pass.  The fact that sweet wishes come second, and not so
+loudly, assured him they were quite secondary; for the lover sunk to
+sophist may be self-beguiled by the arts which render him the potent
+beguiler.
+
+'We are safe here,' he said, and thrilled her with the 'we' behind the
+curtaining leaded window-panes.
+
+'What is it you propose?'  Her voice was lower than she intended.  To
+that she ascribed his vivid flush.  It kindled the deeper of her dark
+hue.
+
+He mentioned her want of luggage, and the purchase of a kit.
+
+She said, 'Have we the means?'
+
+'We can adjust the means to the ends.'
+
+'We must be sparing of expenses.'
+
+'Will you walk part of the way?'
+
+'I should like it.'
+
+'We shall be longer on the journey.'
+
+'We shall not find it tiresome, I hope.'
+
+'We can say so, if we do.'
+
+'We are not strangers.'
+
+The recurrence of the 'we' had an effect of wedding: it was fatalistic,
+it would come; but, in truth, there was pleasure in it, and the pleasure
+was close to consciousness of some guilt when vowing itself innocent.
+
+And, no, they were not strangers; hardly a word could they utter without
+cutting memory to the quick; their present breath was out of the far
+past.
+
+Love told them both that they were trembling into one another's arms,
+not voluntarily, against the will with each of them; they knew it would
+be for life; and Aminta's shamed reserves were matched to make an
+obstacle by his consideration for her good name and her station,
+for his own claim to honest citizenship also.
+
+Weyburn acted on his instinct at sight of the postillion and the chariot;
+he flung the window wide and shouted.  Then he said, 'It is decided,' and
+he felt the rightness of the decision, like a man who has given a
+condemned limb to the surgeon.
+
+Aminta was passive as a water-weed in the sway of the tide.  Hearing it
+to be decided, she was relieved.  What her secret heart desired, she kept
+secret, almost a secret from herself.  He was not to leave her; so she
+had her permitted wish, she had her companion plus her exclamatory aunt,
+who was a protection, and she had learnt her need of the smallest
+protection.
+
+'I can scarcely believe I see you, my dear, dear child!' Mrs. Pagnell
+cried, upon entering the small inn parlour; and so genuine was her
+satisfaction that for a time she paid no heed to the stuffiness of the
+room, the meanness of the place, the unfitness of such a hostelry to
+entertain ladies--the Countess of Ormont!
+
+'Eat here?' Mrs. Pagnell asked, observing the preparations for the meal.
+Her pride quailed, her stomach abjured appetite.  But she forbore from
+asking how it was that the Countess of Ormont had come to the place.
+
+At a symptom of her intention to indulge in disgust; Aminta brought up
+Mr. Morsfield by name; whereupon Mrs. Pagnell showed she had reflected on
+her conduct in relation to the gentleman, and with the fear of the earl
+if she were questioned.
+
+Home-made bread and butter, fresh eggs and sparkling fat of bacon invited
+her to satisfy her hunger.  Aminta let her sniff at the teapot
+unpunished; the tea had a rustic aroma of ground-ivy, reminding Weyburn
+of his mother's curiosity to know the object of an old man's plucking of
+hedgeside leaves in the environs of Bruges one day, and the simple reply
+to her French, 'Tea for the English.'  A hint of an anecdote interested
+and enriched the stores of Mrs. Pagnell, so she capped it and partook of
+the infusion ruefully.
+
+'But the bread is really good,' she said, 'and we are unlikely to be seen
+leaving the place by any person of importance.'
+
+'Unless Mr. Morsfield should be advised to return this way,' said Aminta.
+
+Her aunt proposed for a second cup.  She was a manageable woman; the same
+scourge had its instant wholesome effect on her when she snubbed the
+secretary.
+
+So she complimented his trencherman's knife, of which the remarkably fine
+edge was proof enough that he had come heart-whole out of the trial of an
+hour or so's intimate companionship with a beautiful woman, who had never
+been loved, never could be loved by man, as poor Mr. Morsfield loved her!
+He had sworn to having fasted three whole days and nights after his first
+sight of Aminta.  Once, he said, her eyes pierced him so that he dreamed
+of a dagger in his bosom, and woke himself plucking at it.  That was
+love, as a born gentleman connected with a baronetcy and richer than many
+lords took the dreadful passion.  A secretary would have no conception of
+such devoted extravagance.  At the most he might have attempted to
+insinuate a few absurd, sheepish soft nothings, and the Countess of
+Ormont would know right well how to shrivel him with one of her looks.
+No lady of the land could convey so much either way, to attract or to
+repel, as Aminta, Countess of Ormont!  And the man, the only man,
+insensible to her charm or her scorn, was her own wedded lord and
+husband.  Old, to be sure, and haughty, his pride might not allow him to
+overlook poor Mr. Morsfield's unintentional offence.  But the presence of
+the countess's aunt was a reply to any charge he might seek to establish.
+Unhappily, the case is one between men on their touchiest point, when
+women are pushed aside, and justice and religion as well.  We might be
+living in a heathen land, for aught that morality has to say.
+
+Mrs. Pagnell fussed about being seen on her emergence from the Jolly
+Cricketers.  Aminta sent Weyburn to spy for the possible reappearance of
+Mr. Morsfield.  He reported a horseman; a butcher-boy clattered by.
+Aminta took the landlady's hand, under her aunt's astonished gaze, and
+said: 'I shall not forget your house and your attention to us.' She spoke
+with a shake of her voice.  The landlady curtseyed and smiled, curtseyed
+and almost whimpered.  The house was a poor one, she begged to say; they
+didn't often have such guests, but whoever came to it they did their best
+to give good food and drink.
+
+Hearing from Weyburn that the chariot was bound to go through Winchester,
+she spoke of a brother, a baker there, the last surviving member of her
+family and, after some talk, Weyburn offered to deliver a message of
+health and greeting at the baker's shop.  There was a waving of hands,
+much nodding and curtseying, as the postillion resumed his demi-volts--
+all to the stupefaction of Mrs. Pagnell; but she dared not speak, she had
+Morsfield on the mouth.  Nor could she deny the excellent quality of the
+bread and butter, and milk, too, at the sign of the Jolly Cricketers.
+She admitted, moreover, that the food and service of the little inn
+belonged in their unpretentious honesty to the, kind we call old English:
+the dear old simple country English of the brotherly interchange in sight
+of heaven--good stuff for good money, a matter with a blessing on it.
+
+'But,' said she, 'my dear Aminta, I do not and I cannot understand looks
+of grateful affection at a small innkeeper's wife paid, and I don't doubt
+handsomely paid, for her entertainment of you.'
+
+'I feel it,' said Aminta; tears rushed to her eyelids, overflowing, and
+her features were steady.
+
+'Ah, poor dear! that I do understand,' her aunt observed.  'Any little
+kindness moves you to-day; and well it may.'
+
+'Yes, aunty,' said Aminta, and in relation to the cause of her tears she
+was the less candid of the two.
+
+So far did she carry her thanks for a kindness as to glance back through
+her dropping tears at the sign-board of the Jolly Cricketers; where two
+brave batsmen cross for the second of a certain three runs, if only the
+fellow wheeling legs, face up after the ball in the clouds, does but miss
+his catch: a grand suspensory moment of the game, admirably chosen by the
+artist to arrest the wayfarer and promote speculation.  For will he let
+her slip through his fingers when she comes down? or will he have her
+fast and tight?  And in the former case, the bats are tearing their legs
+off for just number nought.  And in the latter, there 's a wicket down,
+and what you may call a widower walking it bat on shoulder, parted from
+his mate for that mortal innings, and likely to get more chaff than
+consolation when he joins the booth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+UNDER-CURRENTS IN THE MINDS OF LADY CHARLOTTE AND LORD ORMONT
+
+Another journey of travellers to London, in the rear of the chariot, was
+not diversified by a single incident or refreshed by scraps of dialogue.
+Lady Charlotte had her brother Rowsley with her, and he might be
+taciturn,--she drove her flocks of thoughts, she was busily and
+contentedly occupied.  Although separation from him stirred her mind more
+excitedly over their days and deeds of boy and girl, her having him near,
+and having now won him to herself, struck her as that old time's harvest,
+about as much as can be hoped for us from life, when we have tasted it.
+
+The scene of the invasion of Steignton by the woman and her aunt, and
+that man Morsfield, was a steel engraving among her many rapid and
+featureless cogitations.  She magnified the rakishness of the woman's
+hand on hip in view of the house, and she magnified the woman's insolence
+in bringing that man Morsfield--to share probably the hospitality of
+Steignton during the master's absence!  Her trick of caricature, whenever
+she dealt with adversaries, was active upon the three persons under
+observation of the windows.  It was potent to convince her that her
+brother Rowsley had cast the woman to her native obscurity.  However,
+Lady Charlotte could be just: the woman's figure, and as far as could be
+seen of her face, accounted for Rowsley's entanglement.
+
+Why chastize that man Morsfield at all?  Calling him out would give a
+further dip to the name of Ormont.  A pretty idea, to be punishing a roan
+for what you thank him for!  He did a service; and if he's as mad about
+her as he boasts, he can take her and marry her now Rowsley 's free of
+her.
+
+Morsfield says he wants to marry her--wants nothing better.  Then let
+him.  Rowsley has shown him there 's no legal impediment.  Pity that
+young Weyburn had to be sent to do watch-dog duty.  But Rowsley would
+not have turned her back to travel alone: that is, without a man to
+guard.  He 's too chivalrous.
+
+The sending of Weyburn, she now fancied, was her own doing, and Lady
+Charlotte attributed it to her interpretation of her brother's heart of
+chivalry; though it would have been the wiser course, tending straight
+and swift to the natural end, if the two women and their Morsfield had
+received the dismissal to travel as they came.
+
+One sees it after the event.  Yes, only Rowsley would not have dismissed
+her without surety that she would be protected.  So it was the right
+thing prompted on the impulse of the moment.  And young Weyburn would
+meet some difficulty in protecting his 'Lady Ormont,' if she had no
+inclination for it.
+
+Analyzing her impulse of the moment, Lady Charlotte credited herself, not
+unjustly, with a certain considerateness for the woman, notwithstanding
+the woman's violent intrusion between brother and sister.  Knowing the
+world, and knowing the upper or Beanstalk world intimately, she winked at
+nature's passions.  But when the legitimate affection of a brother and
+sister finds them interposing, they are, as little parsonically as
+possible, reproved.  If persistently intrusive, they are handed to the
+constable.
+
+How, supposing the case of a wife?  Well, then comes the contest; and it
+is with an inferior, because not a born, legitimacy of union; which may
+be, which here and there is, affection; is generally the habit of
+partnership.  It is inferior, from not being the union of the blood; it
+is a matter merely of the laws and the tastes.  No love, she reasoned, is
+equal to the love of brother and sister: not even the love of parents for
+offspring, or of children for mother and father.  Brother and sister have
+the holy young days in common; they have lastingly the recollection of
+their youth, the golden time when they were themselves, or the best of
+themselves.  A wife is a stranger from the beginning; she is necessarily
+three parts a stranger up to the finish of the history.  She thinks she
+can absorb the husband.  Not if her husband has a sister living!  She may
+cry and tear for what she calls her own: she will act prudently in bowing
+her head to the stronger tie.  Is there a wife in Europe who broods on
+her husband's merits and his injuries as the sister of Thomas Rowsley,
+Earl of Ormont does? or one to defend his good name, one to work for his
+fortunes, as devotedly?
+
+Over and over Lady Charlotte drove her flocks, of much the same pattern,
+like billows before a piping gale.  They might be similar--a puffed
+iteration, and might be meaningless and wearisome; the gale was a power
+in earnest.
+
+Her brother sat locked-up.  She did as a wife would not have done, and
+held her peace.  He spoke; she replied in a few words--blunt, to the
+point, as no wife would have done.
+
+Her dear, warm-hearted Rowsley was shaken by the blow he had been obliged
+to deal to the woman--poor woman!--if she felt it.  He was always the
+principal sufferer where the feelings were concerned.  He was never for
+hurting any but the enemy.
+
+His 'Ha, here we dine!' an exclamation of a man of imprisoned yawns at
+the apparition of the turnkey, was delightful to her, for a proof of
+health and sanity and enjoyment of the journey.
+
+'Yes, and I've one bottle left, in the hamper, of the hock you like,' she
+said.  'That Mr. Weyburn likes it too.  He drank a couple coming down.'
+
+She did not press for talk; his ready appetite was the flower of
+conversation to her.  And he slept well, he said.  Her personal
+experience on that head was reserved.
+
+London enfolded them in the late evening of a day brewing storm.  My lord
+heard at the door of his house that Lady Ormont had not arrived.  Yet she
+had started a day in advance of him.  He looked down, up and round at
+Charlotte.  He looked into an empty hall.  Pagnell was not there.  A
+sight of Pagnell would, strange to say, have been agreeable.
+
+Storm was in the air, and Aminta was on the road.  Lightning has, before
+now, frightened carriage-horses.  She would not misconduct herself; she
+would sit firm.  No woman in England had stouter nerve--few men.
+
+But the carriage might be smashed.  He was ignorant of the road she had
+chosen for her return.  Out of Wiltshire there would be no cliffs,
+quarries, river-banks, presenting dangers.  Those dangers, however,
+spring up when horses have the frenzy.
+
+Charlotte was nodded at, for a signal to depart; and she drove off,
+speculating on the bullet of a grey eye, which was her brother's adieu
+to her.
+
+The earl had apparently a curiosity to inspect vacant rooms.  His
+Aminta's drawing-room, her boudoir, her bed-chamber, were submissive in
+showing bed, knickknacks, furniture.  They told the tale of a corpse.
+
+He washed and dressed, and went out to his club to dine, hating the faces
+of the servants of the house, just able to bear with the attentions of
+his valet.
+
+Thunder was rattling at ten at night.  The house was again the tomb.
+
+She had high courage, that girl.  She might be in a bed, with her window-
+blind up, calmly waiting for the flashes: lightning excited her.  He had
+seen her lying at her length quietly, her black hair scattered on the
+pillow, like shadow of twigs and sprays on moonlit grass, illuminated
+intermittently; smiling to him, but her heart out and abroad, wild as any
+witch's.  If on the road, she would not quail.  But it was necessary to
+be certain of her having a trusty postillion.
+
+He walked through the drench and scream of a burst cloud to the posting-
+office.  There, after some trouble, he obtained information directing him
+to the neighbouring mews.  He had thence to find his way to the
+neighbouring pot-house.
+
+The report of the postillion was, on the whole, favourable.  The man
+understood horses--was middle-aged--no sot; he was also a man with an
+eye for weather, proverbially in the stables a cautious hand--slow 'Old
+Slow-and-sure,' he was called; by name, Joshua Abnett.
+
+'Oh, Joshua Abnett?' said the earl, and imprinted it on his memory, for
+the service it was to do during the night.
+
+Slow-and-sure Joshua Abnett would conduct her safely, barring accidents.
+For accidents we must all be prepared.  She was a heroine in an accident.
+The earl recalled one and more: her calm face, brightened eyes, easy
+laughter.  Hysterics were not in her family.
+
+She did wrong to let that fellow Morsfield accompany her.  Possibly he
+had come across her on the road, and she could not shake him off.
+Judging by all he knew of her, the earl believed she would not have
+brought the fellow into the grounds of Steignton of her free will.  She
+had always a particular regard for decency.
+
+According to the rumour, Morsfield and the woman Pagnell were very thick
+together.  He barked over London of his being a bitten dog.  He was near
+to the mad dog's fate, as soon as a convenient apology for stopping his
+career could be invented.
+
+The thinking of the lesson to Morsfield on the one hand, and of the slow-
+and-sure postillion Joshua Abriett on the other, lulled Lord Ormont to a
+short repose in his desolate house.  Of Weyburn he had a glancing
+thought, that the young man would be a good dog to guard the countess
+from a mad dog, as he had reckoned in commissioning him.
+
+Next day was the day of sunlight Aminta loved.
+
+It happens with the men who can strike, supposing them of the order of
+civilized creatures, that when they have struck heavily, however deserved
+the blow, a liking for the victim will assail them, if they discover no
+support in hatred; and no sooner is the spot of softness touched than
+they are invaded by hosts of the stricken person's qualities, which plead
+to be taken as virtues, and are persuasive.  The executioner did rightly.
+But it is the turn for the victim to declare the blow excessive.
+
+Now, a just man, who has overdone the stroke, will indemnify and console
+in every way, short of humiliating himself.
+
+He had an unusually clear vision of the scene at Steignton.  Surprise and
+wrath obscured it at the moment, for reflection to bring it out in sharp
+outline; and he was able now to read and translate into inoffensive
+English the inherited Spanish of it, which violated nothing of Aminta's
+native 'donayre,' though it might look on English soil outlandish or
+stagey.
+
+Aminta stood in sunlight on the greensward.  She stood hand on hip,
+gazing at the house she had so long desired to see, without a notion that
+she committed an offence.  Implicitly upon all occasions she took her
+husband's word for anything he stated, and she did not consequently
+imagine him to be at Steignton.  So, then, she had no thought of running
+down from London to hunt and confound him, as at first it appeared.  The
+presence of that white-faced Morsfield vindicated her sufficiently so
+far.  And let that fellow hang till the time for cutting him down!  Not
+she, but Pagnell, seems to have been the responsible party.  And, by the
+way, one might prick the affair with Morsfield by telling him publicly
+that his visit to inspect Steignton was waste of pains, for he would not
+be accepted as a tenant in the kennels, et caetera.
+
+Well, poor girl, she satisfied her curiosity, not aware that a few weeks
+farther on would have done it to the full.
+
+As to Morsfield, never once, either in Vienna or in Paris, had she,
+warmly admired though she was, all eyes telescoping and sun-glassing on
+her, given her husband an hour or half an hour or two minutes of anxiety.
+Letters came.  The place getting hot, she proposed to leave it.
+
+She had been rather hardly tried.  There are flowers we cannot keep
+growing in pots.  Her fault was, that instead of flinging down her glove
+and fighting it out openly, she listened to Pagnell, and began the game
+of Pull.  If he had a zest for the game, it was to stump the woman
+Pagnell.  So the veteran fancied in his amended mind.
+
+This intrusive sunlight chased him from the breakfast-table and out of
+the house.  She would be enjoying it somewhere; but the house empty of a
+person it was used to contain had an atmosphere of the vaults, and inside
+it the sunlight she loved had an effect of taunting him singularly.
+
+He called on his upholsterer and heard news to please her.  The house
+hired for a month above Great Marlow was ready; her ladyship could enter
+it to-morrow.  It pleased my lord to think that she might do so, and not
+bother him any more about the presentation at Court during the current
+year.  In spite of certain overtures from the military authorities, and
+roused eulogistic citations of his name in the newspapers and magazines,
+he was not on friendly terms with his country yet, having contracted the
+fatal habit of irony, which, whether hitting or musing its object, stirs
+old venom in our wound, twitches the feelings.  Unfortunately for him,
+they had not adequate expression unless he raged within; so he had to
+shake up wrath over his grievances, that he might be satisfactorily
+delivered; and he was judged irreconcilable when he had subsided into the
+quietest contempt, from the prospective seat of a country estate, in the
+society of a young wife who adored him.
+
+An exile from the sepulchre of that house void of the consecration of
+ashes, he walked the streets and became reconciled to street sunlight.
+There were no carriage accidents to disturb him with apprehensions.
+Besides, the slowness of the postillion Joshua Abnett, which probably
+helped to the delay, was warrant of his sureness.  And in an accident the
+stringy fellow, young Weyburn, could be trusted for giving his attention
+to the ladies--especially to the younger of the two, taking him for the
+man his elders were at his age.  As for Pagnell, a Providence watches
+over the Pagnells!  Mortals have no business to interfere.
+
+An accident on water would be a frolic to his girl.  Swimming was a gift
+she had from nature.  Pagnell vowed she swam out a mile at Dover when she
+was twelve.  He had seen her in blue water: he had seen her readiness to
+jump to the rescue once when a market-woman, stepping out of a boat to
+his yacht on the Tabus, plumped in.  She had the two kinds of courage--
+the impulsive and the reasoned.  What is life to man or woman if we are
+not to live it honourably?  Men worthy of the name say this.  The woman
+who says and acts on it is--well, she is fit company for them.  But only
+the woman of natural courage can say it and act on it.
+
+Would she come by Winchester, or choose the lower road by Salisbury and
+Southampton, to smell the sea? perhaps-like her!--dismissing the chariot
+and hiring a yacht for a voyage round the coast and up the Thames.  She
+had an extraordinary love of the sea, yet she preferred soldiers to
+sailors.  A woman?  Never one of them more a woman!  But it came of her
+quickness to take the colour and share the tastes of the man to whom she
+gave herself.
+
+My lord was beginning to distinguish qualities in a character.
+
+He was informed at the mews that Joshua Abnett was on the road still.
+Joshua seemed to be a roadster of uncommon unprogressiveness, proper to a
+framed picture.
+
+While debating whether to lunch at his loathed club or at a home loathed
+more, but open to bright enlivenment any instant, Lord Ormont beheld a
+hat lifted and Captain May saluting him.  They were near a famous
+gambling-house in St. James's Street.
+
+'Good! I am glad to see you,' he said.  'Tell me you know Mr. Morsfield
+pretty well.  I'm speaking of my affair.  He has been trespassing down
+on my grounds at Steignton, and I think of taking the prosecution of him
+into my own hands. Is he in town?'
+
+'I 've just left his lame devil Cumnock, my lord,' said May, after a
+slight grimace.  'They generally run in tandem.'
+
+'Will you let me know?'
+
+'At once, when I hear.'
+
+'You will call on me?  Before noon?'
+
+'Any service required?'
+
+'My respects to your wife.'
+
+'Your lordship is very good.'
+
+Captain May bloomed at a civility paid to his wife.  He was a smallish,
+springy, firm-faced man, devotee of the lady bearing his name and
+wielding him.  In the days when duelling flourished on our land, frail
+women could be powerful.
+
+The earl turned from him to greet Lord Adderwood and a superior officer
+of his Profession, on whom he dropped a frigid nod.  He held that all but
+the rank and file, and a few subalterns, of the service had abandoned him
+to do homage to the authorities.  The Club he frequented was not his
+military Club.  Indeed, lunching at any Club in solitariness that day,
+with Aminta away from home, was bitter penance.  He was rejoiced by Lord
+Adderwood's invitation, and hung to him after the lunch; for a horrible
+prospect of a bachelor dinner intimated astonishingly that he must have
+become unawares a domesticated man.
+
+The solitary later meal of a bachelor was consumed, if the word will suit
+a rabbit's form of feeding.  He fatigued his body by walking the streets
+and the bridge of the Houses of Parliament, and he had some sleep under a
+roof where a life like death, or death apeing life, would have seemed to
+him the Joshua Abnett, if he had been one to take up images.
+
+Next day he was under the obligation to wait at home till noon.  Shortly
+before noon a noise of wheels drew him to the window.  A young lady, in
+whom he recognized Aminta's little school friend, of some name, stepped
+out of a fly.  He met her in the hall.
+
+She had expected to be welcomed by Aminta, and she was very timid on
+finding herself alone with the earl.  He, however, treated her as the
+harbinger bird, wryneck of the nightingale, sure that Aminta would keep
+her appointment unless an accident delayed.  He had forgotten her name,
+but not her favourite pursuit of botany; and upon that he discoursed,
+and he was interested, not quite independently of the sentiment of her
+being there as a guarantee of Aminta's return.  Still he knew his English
+earth, and the counties and soil for particular wild-flowers, grasses,
+mosses; and he could instruct her and inspire a receptive pupil on the
+theme of birds, beasts, fishes, insects, in England and other lands.
+
+He remained discoursing without much weariness till four of the
+afternoon.  Then he had his reward.  The chariot was at the door, and the
+mounted figure of Joshua Abnett, on which he cast not a look or a
+thought.  Aminta was alone.  She embraced Selina Collett warmly, and
+said, in friendly tones, 'Ah!  my lord, you are in advance of me.'
+
+She had dropped Mrs. Pagnell and Mr. Weyburn at two suburban houses;
+working upon her aunt's dread of the earl's interrogations as regarded
+Mr. Morsfield.  She had, she said, chosen to take the journey easily on
+her return, and enjoyed it greatly.
+
+My lord studied her manner more than her speech.  He would have
+interpreted a man's accurately enough.  He read hers to signify that she
+had really enjoyed her journey, 'made the best of it,' and did not intend
+to be humble about her visit to Steignton without his permission; but
+that, if hurt at the time, she had recovered her spirits, and was ready
+for a shot or two--to be nothing like a pitched battle.  And she might
+fire away to her heart's content: wordy retorts would not come from him;
+he had material surprises in reserve for her.  His question concerning
+Morsfield knew its answer, and would only be put under pressure.
+
+Comparison of the friends Aminta and Selina was forced by their standing
+together, and the representation in little Selina of the inferiority of
+the world of women to his Aminta; he thought of several, and splendid
+women, foreign and English.  The comparison rose sharply now, with
+Aminta's novel, airy, homely, unchallengeing assumption of an equal
+footing beside her lord, in looks and in tones that had cast off
+constraint of the adoring handmaid, to show the full-blown woman,
+rightful queen of her half of the dominion.  Between the Aminta of then
+and now, the difference was marked as between Northern and Southern
+women: the frozen-mouthed Northerner and the pearl and rose-nipped
+Southerner; those who smirk in dropping congealed monosyllables, and
+those who radiantly laugh out the voluble chatter.
+
+Conceiving this to the full in a mind destitute of imagery, but
+indicative of the thing as clearly as the planed, unpolished woodwork of
+a cabinet in a carpenter's shop, Lord Ormont liked her the better for the
+change, though she was not the woman whose absence from his house had
+caused him to go mooning half a night through the streets, and though it
+forewarned him of a tougher bit of battle, if battle there was to be.
+
+He was a close reader of surfaces.  But in truth, the change so notable
+came of the circumstance, that some little way down below the surface he
+perused, where heart weds mind, or nature joins intellect, for the two to
+beget a resolution, the battle of the man and the woman had been fought,
+and the man beaten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+TREATS OF THE FIRST DAY OF THE CONTENTION OF BROTHER AND SISTER
+
+In the contest rageing at mid-sea still between the man and the woman,
+it is the one who is hard to the attractions of the other that will make
+choice of the spot and have the advantages.  A short time earlier Lord
+Ormont could have marked it out at his leisure.  He would have been
+unable to comprehend why it was denied him to do so now; for he was
+master of himself, untroubled by conscience, unaware, since he was
+assured of his Aminta's perfect safety and his restored sense of
+possession, that any taint of softness in him had reversed the condition
+of their alliance.  He felt benevolently the much he had to bestow, and
+was about to bestow.  Meanwhile, without complicity on his part, without
+his knowledge, yet absolutely involving his fate, the battle had gone
+against him in Aminta's breast.
+
+Like many of his class and kind, he was thoroughly acquainted with the
+physical woman, and he took that first and very engrossing volume of
+the great Book of Mulier for all the history.  A powerful wing of
+imagination, strong as the flappers of the great Roc of Arabian story,
+is needed to lift the known physical woman even a very little way up into
+azure heavens.  It is far easier to take a snap-shot at the psychic, and
+tumble her down from her fictitious heights to earth.  The mixing of the
+two make nonsense of her.  She was created to attract the man, for an
+excellent purpose in the main.  We behold her at work incessantly.  One
+is a fish to her hook; another a moth to her light.  By the various arts
+at her disposal she will have us, unless early in life we tear away the
+creature's coloured gauzes and penetrate to her absurdly simple
+mechanism.  That done, we may, if we please, dominate her.  High priests
+of every religion have successively denounced her as the chief enemy.
+To subdue and bid her minister to our satisfaction is therefore a right
+employment of man's unperverted superior strength.  Of course, we keep to
+ourselves the woman we prefer; but we have to beware of an uxorious
+preference, or we are likely to resemble the Irishman with his wolf, and
+dance imprisoned in the hug of our captive.
+
+For it is the creature's characteristic to be lastingly awake, in her
+moments of utmost slavishness most keenly awake to the chances of the
+snaring of the stronger.  Be on guard, then.  Lord Ormont had been on
+guard then and always: his instinct of commandership kept him on guard.
+He was on guard now when his Aminta played, not the indignant and the
+frozen, but the genially indifferent.  She did it well, he admitted.
+
+Had it been the indignant she played, he might have stooped to cajole the
+handsome queen of gypsies she was, without acknowledgement of her right
+to complain.  Feeling that he was about to be generous, he shrugged.  He
+meant to speak in deeds.
+
+Lady Charlotte's house was at the distance of a stroller's half-hour
+across Hyde Park westward from his own.  Thither he walked, a few minutes
+after noon, prepared for cattishness.  He could fancy that he had
+hitherto postponed the visit rather on her account, considering that
+he would have to crush her if she humped and spat, and he hoped to
+be allowed to do it gently.  There would certainly be a scene.
+
+Lady Charlotte was at home.
+
+'Always at home to you, Rowsley, at any hour.  Mr. Eglett has driven down
+to the City.  There 's a doctor in a square there's got a reputation for
+treating weak children, and he has taken down your grand-nephew Bobby to
+be inspected.  Poor boy comes of a poor stock on the father's side.  Mr.
+Eglett would have that marriage.  Now he sees wealth isn't everything.
+Those Benlews are rushlights.  However, Elizabeth stood with her father
+to have Robert Benlew, and this poor child 's the result.  I wonder
+whether they have consciences!'
+
+My lord prolonged the sibilation of his 'Yes,' in the way of absent-
+minded men.  He liked little Bobby, but had to class the boy second
+for the present.
+
+'You have our family jewels in your keeping, Charlotte?'
+
+'No, I haven't,--and you know I haven't, Rowsley.'  She sprang to arms,
+the perfect porcupine, at his opening words, as he had anticipated.
+
+'Where are the jewels?'
+
+'They're in the cellars of my bankers, and safe there, you may rely on
+it.'
+
+'I want them.'
+
+'I want to have them safe; and there they stop.'
+
+'You must get them and hand them over.'
+
+'To whom?'
+
+'To me.'
+
+'What for?'
+
+'They will be worn by the Countess of Ormont'
+
+'Who 's she?'
+
+'The lady who bears the title.'
+
+'The only Countess of Ormont I know of is your mother and mine, Rowsley;
+and she's dead.'
+
+'The Countess of Ormont I speak of is alive.'
+
+Lady Charlotte squared to him.  'Who gives her the title?'
+
+'She bears it by right.'
+
+'Do you mean to say, Rowsley, you have gone and married the woman since
+we came up from Steignton?'
+
+'She is my wife.'
+
+'Anyhow, she won't have our family jewels.'
+
+'If you had swallowed them, you'd have to disgorge.'
+
+'I don't give up our family jewels to such people.'
+
+'Do you decline to call on her?'
+
+'I do: I respect our name and blood.'
+
+'You will send the order to your bankers for them to deliver the jewels
+over to me at my house this day.'
+
+'Look here, Rowsley; you're gone cracked or senile.  You 're in the hands
+of one of those clever wenches who catch men of your age.  She may catch
+you; she shan't lay hold of our family jewels: they stand for the honour
+of our name and blood.'
+
+'They are to be at my house-door at four o'clock this afternoon.'
+
+'They'll not stir.'
+
+'Then I go down to order your bankers and give them the order.'
+
+'My bankers won't attend to it without the order from me.'
+
+'You will submit to the summons of my lawyers.'
+
+'You're bent on a public scandal, are you?'
+
+'I am bent on having the jewels.'
+
+'They are not yours; you 've no claim to them; they are heirlooms in our
+family.  Things most sacred to us are attached to them.  They belong to
+our history.  There 's the tiara worn by the first Countess of Ormont.
+There 's the big emerald of the necklace-pendant--you know the story
+of it.  Two rubies not counted second to any in England.  All those
+diamonds!  I wore the cross and the two pins the day I was presented
+after my marriage.'
+
+'The present Lady Ormont will wear them the day she is presented.'
+
+'She won't wear them at Court.'
+
+'She will.'
+
+'Don't expect the Lady Ormont of tradesmen and footmen to pass the Lord
+Chamberlain.'
+
+'That matter will be arranged for next season.  Now I 've done.'
+
+'So have I; and you have my answer, Rowsley.' They quitted their chairs.
+
+'You decline to call on my wife?' said the earl.
+
+Lady Charlotte replied: 'Understand me, now.  If the woman has won you
+round to legitimize the connection, first, I've a proper claim to see her
+marriage lines.  I must have a certificate of her birth.  I must have a
+testified account of her life before you met her and got the worst of it.
+Then, as the case may be, I 'll call on her.
+
+'You will behave yourself when you call.'
+
+'But she won't have our family jewels.'
+
+'That affair has been settled by me.'
+
+'I should be expecting to hear of them as decorating the person of one of
+that man Morsfield's mistresses.'
+
+The earl's brow thickened.  'Charlotte, I smacked your cheek when you
+were a girl.'
+
+'I know you did.  You might again, and I wouldn't cry out.  She travels
+with that Morsfield; you 've seen it.  He goes boasting of her.  Gypsy or
+not, she 's got queer ways.'
+
+'I advise you, you had better learn at once to speak of her
+respectfully.'
+
+'I shall have enough to go through, if what you say's true, with
+questions of the woman's antecedents and her people, and the date of the
+day of this marriage.  When was the day you did it?  I shall have to give
+an answer.  You know cousins of ours, and the way they 'll be pressing,
+and comparing ages and bawling rumours.  None of them imagined my brother
+such a fool as to be wheedled into marrying her.  You say it's done,
+Rowsley.  Was it done yesterday or the day before?'
+
+Lord Ormont found unexpectedly that she struck on a weak point.  Married
+from the first?  Why not tell me of it?  He could hear her voice as if
+she had spoken the words.  And how communicate the pell-mell of reasons?
+
+'You're running vixen.  The demand I make is for the jewels,' he said.
+
+'You won't have them, Rowsley--not for her.'
+
+'You think of compelling me to use force?'
+
+'Try it.'
+
+'You swear the jewels are with your bankers?'
+
+'I left them in charge of my bankers, and they've not been moved by me.'
+
+'Well, it must be force.'
+
+'Nothing short of it when the honour of our family's concerned.'
+
+It was rather worse than the anticipated struggle with this Charlotte,
+though he had kept his temper.  The error was in supposing that an hour's
+sharp conflict would settle it, as he saw.  The jewels required a siege.
+
+'When does Eglett return?' he asked.
+
+'Back to lunch.  You stay and lunch here, Rowsley we don't often have
+you.'
+
+The earl contemplated her, measuring her powers of resistance for a
+prolonged engagement.  Odd that the pride which had withdrawn him from
+the service of an offending country should pitch him into a series of
+tussles with women, for its own confusion!  He saw that, too, in his dim
+reflectiveness, and held the country answerable for it.
+
+Mr. Eglett was taken into confidence by him privately after lunch.
+Mr. Eglett's position between the brother and sister was perplexing;
+habitually he thought his wife had strong good sense, in spite of the
+costliness of certain actions at law not invariably confirming his
+opinion; he thought also that the earl's demand must needs be considered
+obediently.  At the same time, his wife's objections to the new Countess
+of Ormont, unmasked upon the world, seemed very legitimate; though it
+might be asked why the earl should not marry, marrying the lady who
+pleased him.  But if, in the words of his wife, the lady had no claim to
+be called a lady, the marriage was deplorable.  On the other hand, Lord
+Ormont spoke of her in terms of esteem, and he was no fondling dotard.
+
+How to compromise the matter for the sake of peace?  The man perpetually
+plunged into strife by his combative spouse, cried the familiar question
+again; and at every suggestion of his on behalf of concord he heard from
+Lady Charlotte that he had no principles, or else from Lord Ormont that
+his head must be off his shoulders.
+
+The man for peace had the smallest supply of language, and so, unless he
+took a side and fought, his active part was football between them.
+
+It went on through the afternoon up to five o'clock.  No impression was
+betrayed by Lady Charlotte.
+
+She congratulated her brother on the recruit he had enlisted.  He smiled
+his grimmest of the lips drawn in.  A combat, perceptibly of some
+extension, would soon give him command of the man of peace; and energy
+to continue attacks will break down the energies of any dogged defensive
+stand.
+
+He deferred the discussion with his unreasonable sister until the next
+day at half-past twelve o'clock.  Lady Charlotte nodded to the
+appointment.  She would have congratulated herself without irony on the
+result of the first day's altercation but for her brother Rowsley's
+unusual and ominous display of patience.  Twice during the wrangle she
+had to conceal a difficult breathing.  She felt a numbness in one arm
+now it was over, and mentally complimented her London physician on the
+unerringness of his diagnosis.  Her heart, however, complained of the
+cruelty of having in the end, perhaps, if the wrangle should be
+protracted, to yield, for sheer weakness, without ceasing to beat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE ORMONT JEWELS
+
+At half-past twelve of the noon next day Lord Ormont was at Lady
+Charlotte's house door.  She welcomed him affectionately, as if nothing
+were in dispute; he nodded an acceptance of her greetings, with a blunt
+intimation of the business to be settled; she put on her hump of the
+feline defensive; then his batteries opened fire and hers barked back on
+him.  Each won admiration of the other's tenacity, all the more
+determined to sap or split it.  They had known one another's character,
+but they had never seen it in such strong light.  Never had their mutual
+and similar, though opposed, resources been drawn out so copiously and
+unreservedly.  This was the shining scrawl of all that each could do to
+gain a fight.  They admired one another's contemptibly justifiable
+evasions, changes of front, statements bordering the lie, even to
+meanness in the withdrawal of admissions and the denial of the same ever
+having been made.  That was Charlotte!  That was Rowsley!  Anything to
+beat down the adversary.
+
+As to will, the woman's will, of these two, equalled the man's.  They
+were matched in obstinacy and unscrupulousness.
+
+Her ingenuitics of the defence eluded his attacks, and compelled him to
+fall on heavy iteration of his demand for the jewels, an immediate
+restitution of the jewels.  'Why immediate?' cried she.
+
+He repeated it without replying to her.
+
+'But, you tell me, Rowsley, why immediate?  If you're in want of money
+for her, you come to me, tell me, you shall have thousands.  I'll drive
+down to the City to-morrow and sell out stock.  Mr. Eglett won't mind
+when he hears the purpose.  I shall call five thousand cheap, and don't
+ask to see the money again.'
+
+'Ah! double the sum to have your own way!' said he.
+
+She protested that she valued her money.  She furnished instances of her
+carefulness of her money all along up to the present period of brutal old
+age.  Yet she would willingly part with five thousand or more to save the
+family honour.  Mr. Eglett would not only approve, he would probably
+advance a good part of the money himself.
+
+'Money!  Who wants money?' thundered the earl, and jumped out of her trap
+of the further diversion from the plain request.  'To-morrow, when I am
+here, I shall expect to have the jewels delivered to me.'
+
+'That you may hand them over to her.  Where are they likely to be this
+time next year?  And what do you know about jewels?  You may look at them
+when you ask to see them, and not know imitation paste--like the stuff
+Lady Beltus showed her old husband.  Our mother wore them, and she prized
+them.  I'm not sure I wouldn't rather hear they were exhibited in a Bond
+Street jeweller's shop or a Piccadilly pawnbroker's than have them on
+that woman.'
+
+'You speak of my wife.'
+
+'For a season, perhaps; and off they're likely to go, to pay bills, if
+her Adderwoods and her Morsfields are out of funds, as they call it.'
+
+'You are aware you are speaking of my wife, Charlotte?'
+
+'You daren't say my sister-in-law.'
+
+He did not choose to say it; and once more she dared him.  She could
+imagine she scored a point.
+
+They were summoned to lunch by Mr. Eglett; and there was an hour's
+armistice; following which the earl demanded the restitution of the
+jewels, and heard the singular question, childishly accentuated, 'What
+for?'
+
+Patience was his weapon and support, so he named his object with an air
+of inveteracy in tranquillity they were for his wife to wear.
+
+Lady Charlotte dared him to say they were for her sister-in-law.
+
+He despised the transparent artifice of the challenge.
+
+'But you have to own the difference,' she said.  'You haven't lost
+respect for your family, thank God!  No.  It 's one thing to say she 's
+a wife: you hang fire when it 's to say she 's my sister-in-law.'
+
+'You'll have to admit the fact, Charlotte.'
+
+'How long is it since I should have had to admit the fact?'
+
+'From the date of my marriage.'
+
+'Tell me the date.'
+
+'No, you don't wear a wig, Charlotte; but you are fit to practise in the
+Law-courts!' he said, exasperatedly jocular.
+
+She had started a fresh diversion, and she pressed him for the date.
+'I 'm supposed to have had a sister-in-law-how many weeks?--months?'
+
+'Years.'
+
+'Married years!  And if you've been married years, where were you
+married?  Not in a church.  That woman's no church-bride.'
+
+'There are some clever women made idiots of by their trullish tempers.'
+
+'Abuse away.  I've asked you where you were married, Rowsley.'
+
+'Go to Madrid.  Go to the Embassy.  Apply to the chaplain.'
+
+'Married in Madrid!  Who's ever married in Madrid!  You flung her a
+yellow handkerchief, and she tied it round her neck--that 's your
+ceremony!  Now you tell me you've been married years; and she's a young
+woman; you fetch her over from Madrid, set her in a place where those
+Morsfields and other fungi-fellows grow, and she has to think herself
+lucky to be received by a Lady Staines and a Mrs. Lawrence Finchley, and
+she the talk of the town, refused at Court, for all an honourable-enough
+old woman countenanced her in pity; and I 'm asked to believe she was my
+brother's wife, sister-in-law of mine, all the while!  I won't.'
+
+Lady Charlotte dilated on it for a length of time, merely to show she
+declined to believe it; pouring Morsfield over him and the talk of the
+town, the gypsy caught in Spain--now to be foisted on her as her sister-
+in-law!  She could fancy she produced an effect.
+
+She did indeed unveil to him a portion of the sufferings his Aminta had
+undergone; as visibly, too, the good argumentative reasons for his
+previous avoidance of the deadly, dismal wrangle here forced on him.
+A truly dismal, profitless wrangle!  But the finish of it would be
+the beginning of some solace to his Aminta.
+
+The finish of it must be to-morrow.  He refrained from saying so, and
+simply appointed to-morrow for the resumption of the wrestle, departing
+in his invincible coat of patience: which one has to wear when dealing
+with a woman like Charlotte, he informed Mr. Eglett, on his way out at
+a later hour than on the foregone day.  Mr. Eglett was of his opinion,
+that an introduction of lawyers into a family dispute was 'rats in the
+pantry'; and he would have joined him in his gloomy laugh, if the thought
+of Charlotte in a contention had not been so serious a matter.  She might
+be beaten; she could not be brought to yield.
+
+She retired to her bedroom, and laid herself flat on her bed, immoveable,
+till her maid undressed her for the night.  A cup of broth and strip of
+toast formed her sole nourishment.  As for her doctor's possible
+reproaches, the symptoms might crowd and do their worst; she fought for
+the honour of her family.
+
+At midday of the third day Lady Charlotte was reduced to the condition of
+those fortresses which wave defiantly the flag, but deliver no further
+shot, awaiting the assault.  Her body, affected by hideous old age,
+succumbed.  Her will was unshaken.  She would not write to her bankers.
+Mr. Eglett might go to them, if he thought fit.  Rowsley was to
+understand that he might call himself married; she would have no flower-
+basket bunch of a sister-in-law thrust upon her.
+
+Lord Ormont and Mr. Eglett walked down to her bankers in the afternoon.
+As a consequence of express injunctions given by my lady five years
+previously, the assistant-manager sought an interview with her.
+
+The jewels were lodged at her house the day ensuing.  They were examined,
+verified by the list in Lady Charlotte's family record-book, and then
+taken away--forcibly, of course--by her brother.
+
+He laughed in his dry manner; but the reminiscent glimpses, helping him
+to see the humour of it, stirred sensations of the tug it had been with
+that combative Charlotte, and excused him for having shrunk from the
+encounter until he conceived it to be necessary.
+
+Settlement of the affair with Morsfield now claimed his attention.  The
+ironical tolerance he practised in relation to Morsfield when Aminta had
+no definite station before the world changed to an angry irritability
+at the man's behaviour now that she had stepped forth under his
+acknowledgement of her as the Countess of Ormont.  He had come round
+to a rather healthier mind regarding his country, and his introduction
+of the Countess of Ormont to the world was his peace-offering.
+
+As he returned home earlier on the third day, he found his diligent
+secretary at work.  The calling on Captain May and the writing to the
+sort of man were acts obnoxious to his dignity; so he despatched Weyburn
+to the captain's house, one in a small street of three narrow tenements
+abutting on aristocracy and terminating in mews.  Weyburn's mission was
+to give the earl's address at Great Marlow for the succeeding days, and
+to see Captain May, if the captain was at home.  During his absence the
+precious family jewel-box was locked in safety.  Aminta and her friend,
+little Miss Collett, were out driving, by the secretary's report.  The
+earl considered it a wholesome feature of Aminta's character that she
+should have held to her modest schoolmate the fact spoke well for both of
+them.
+
+A look at the papers to serve for Memoirs was discomposing, and led him
+to think the secretary could be parted with as soon as he pleased to go:
+say, a week hence.
+
+The Memoirs were no longer designed for issue.  He had the impulse to
+treat them on the spot as the Plan for the Defence of the Country had
+been treated; and for absolutely obverse reasons.  The secretary and the
+Memoirs were associated: one had sprung out of the other.  Moreover, the
+secretary had witnessed a scene at Steignton.  The young man had done his
+duty, and would be thanked for that, and dismissed, with a touch of his
+employer's hand.  The young man would have made a good soldier--a better
+soldier, good as he might be as a scribe.  He ought to have been in his
+father's footsteps, and he would then have disciplined or quashed his
+fantastical ideas.  Perhaps he was right on the point of toning the
+Memoirs here and there.  Since the scene at Steignton Lord Ormont's views
+had changed markedly in relation to everybody about him, and most things.
+
+Weyburn came back at the end of an hour to say that he had left the
+address with Mrs. May, whom he had seen.
+
+'A handsome person,' the earl observed.
+
+'She must have been very handsome,' said Weyburn.
+
+'Ah! we fall into their fictions, or life would be a bald business, upon
+my word!'
+
+Lord Ormont had not uttered it before the sentiment of his greater luck
+with one of that queer world of the female lottery went through him on a
+swell of satisfaction, just a wave.
+
+An old-world eye upon women, it seemed to Weyburn.  But the man who could
+crown a long term of cruel injustice with the harshness to his wife at
+Steignton would naturally behold women with that eye.
+
+However, he was allowed only to generalize; he could not trust himself
+to dwell on Lady Ormont and the Aminta inside the shell.  Aminta and Lady
+Ormont might think as one or diversely of the executioner's blow she had
+undergone.  She was a married woman, and she probably regarded the
+wedding by law as the end a woman has to aim at, and is annihilated by
+hitting; one flash of success, and then extinction, like a boy's cracker
+on the pavement.  Not an elevated image, but closely resembling that
+which her alliance with Lord Ormont had been!
+
+At the same time, no true lover of a woman advises her--imploring is
+horrible treason--to slip the symbolic circle of the law from her finger,
+and have in an instant the world for her enemy.  She must consent to be
+annihilated, and must have no feelings; particularly no mind.  The mind
+is the danger for her.  If she has a mind alive, she will certainly push
+for the position to exercise it, and run the risk of a classing with
+Nature's created mates for reptile men.
+
+Besides, Lady Ormont appeared, in the company of her friend Selina
+Collett, not worse than rather too thoughtful; not distinctly unhappy.
+And she was conversable, smiling.  She might have had an explanation with
+my lord, accepting excuses--or, who knows? taking the blame, and offering
+them.  Weakness is pliable.  So pliable is it, that it has been known for
+a crack of the masterly whip to fling off the victim and put on the
+culprit!  Ay, but let it be as it may with Lady Ormont, Aminta is of a
+different composition.  Aminta's eyes of the return journey to London
+were haunting lights, and lured him to speculate; and for her sake he
+rejected the thought that for him they meant anything warmer than the
+passing thankfulness, though they were a novel assurance to him of her
+possession beneath her smothering cloud of the power to resolve, and show
+forth a brilliant individuality.
+
+The departure of the ladies and my lord in the travelling carriage for
+the house on the Upper Thames was passably sweetened to Weyburn by the
+command to him to follow in a day or two, and continue his work there
+until he left England.  Aminta would not hear of an abandonment of the
+Memoirs.  She spoke on the subject to my lord as to a husband pardoned.
+
+She was not less affable and pleasant with him out of Weyburn's hearing.
+My lord earned her gratitude for his behaviour to Selina Collett, to whom
+he talked interestedly of her favourite pursuit, as he had done on the
+day when, as he was not the man to forget, her arrival relieved him of
+anxiety.  Aminta, noticed the box on the seat beside him.
+
+They drove up to their country house in time to dress leisurely for
+dinner.  Nevertheless, the dinner-hour had struck several minutes before
+she descended; and the earl, as if not expecting her, was out on the
+garden path beside the river bank with Selina.  She beckoned from the
+step of the open French window.
+
+He came to her at little Selina's shuffling pace, conversing upon water-
+plants.
+
+'No jewelry to-day?' he said.
+
+And Aminta replied: 'Carstairs has shown me the box and given the key.
+I have not opened it.'
+
+'Time in the evening, or to-morrow.  You guess the contents?'
+
+'I presume I do.'
+
+She looked feverish and shadowed.
+
+He murmured kindly: 'Anything?'
+
+'Not now: we will dine.'
+
+She had missed, had lost, she feared, her own jewelbox; a casket of no
+great treasure to others, but of a largely estimable importance to her.
+
+After the heavy ceremonial entrance and exit of dishes, she begged the
+earl to accompany her for an examination of the contents of the box.
+
+As soon as her chamber-door was shut, she said, in accents of alarm:
+'Mine has disappeared.  Carstairs, I know, is to be trusted.  She
+remembers carrying the box out of my room; she believes she can remember
+putting it into the fly.  She had to confess that it had vanished,
+without her knowing how, when my boxes were unpacked.'
+
+'Is she very much upset?' said the earl.
+
+'Carstairs?  Why, yes, poor creature! you can imagine.  I have no doubt
+she feels for me; and her own reputation is concerned.  What do you think
+is best to be done?'
+
+'To be done!  Overhaul the baggage again in all the rooms.'
+
+'We've not failed to do that.'
+
+'Control yourself, my dear.  If, by bad luck, they're lost, we can
+replace them.  The contents of this box, now, we could not replace.
+Open it, and judge.'
+
+'I have no curiosity--forgive me, I beg.  And the servant's fly has been
+visited, ransacked inside and out, footmen questioned; we have not left
+anything we can conceive of undone.  My lord, will you suggest?'
+
+'The intrinsic value of the gems would not be worth--not worth Aminta's
+one beat of the heart.  Upon my word--not one!'
+
+An amatory knightly compliment breasting her perturbation roused an
+unwonted spite; and a swift reflection on it startled her with a
+suspicion.  She cast it behind her.  He could be angler and fish, he
+would not be cat and mouse.
+
+She said, however, more temperately: 'It is not the value of the gems.
+We are losing precious minutes!'
+
+'Association of them with the giver?  Is it that?  If that has a value
+for you, he is flattered.'
+
+This betrayed him to the woman waxing as intensely susceptible in all her
+being as powder to sparks.
+
+'There is to be no misunderstanding, my lord,' she said.  'I like--
+I value my jewels; but--I am alarmed lest the box should fall into hands
+--into strange hands.'
+
+'The box!' he exclaimed with an outline of a comic grimace; and, if
+proved a voluptuary in torturing, he could instance half a dozen points
+for extenuation: her charm of person, withheld from him, and to be
+embraced; her innocent naughtiness; compensation coming to her in excess
+for a transient infliction of pain.  'Your anxiety is about the box?'
+
+'Yes, the box,' Aminta said firmly. 'It contains--'
+
+'No false jewels?  A thief might complain.'
+
+'It contains letters, my lord.' 'Blackmail?'
+
+'You would be at liberty to read them.  I would rather they were burnt.'
+
+'Ah!'  The earl heaved his chest prodigiously.  'Blackmail letters are
+better in a husband's hands, if they can be laid there.'
+
+'If there is a necessity for him to read them--yes.'
+
+'There may be a necessity, there can't be a gratification,--though there
+are dogs of thick blood that like to scratch their sores,' he murmured to
+himself.  'You used to show me these declaration epistles.'
+
+'Not the names.'
+
+'Not the names--no!'
+
+'When we had left the country, I showed you why it had been my wish to
+go.'
+
+'Xarifa was and is female honour.  Take the key, open that box; I will
+make inquiries.  But, my dear, you guess everything.  Your little box was
+removed for the bigger impression to be produced by this one.'
+
+A flash came out of her dark eyes.
+
+'No, you guess wrong this time, you clever shrew!  I wormed nothing from
+you,' said he.  'I knew you kept particular letters in that receptacle of
+things of price: Aminta can't conceal.  The man has worried you.  Why not
+have come to me?'
+
+'Oblige me, my lord, by restoring me my box.'
+
+'This is your box.'
+
+Her bosom lifted with the words Oh, no!  unspoken.  He took the key and
+opened the box.  A dazzling tray of stones was revealed; underneath it
+the constellations in cases, very heavens for the worldly Eve; and he
+doubted that Eve could have gone completely out of her.  But she had, as
+observation instructed him, set her woman's mind on something else, and
+must have it before letting her eyes fall on objects impossible for any
+of her sex to see without coveting them.
+
+He bowed.  'I will fetch it,' he said magnanimously.  Her own box was
+brought from his room.  She then consented to look womanly at the Ormont
+jewels, over which the battle; whereof she knew nothing, and nothing
+could be told her, had been fought in her interests, for her sovereign
+pleasure.
+
+She looked and admired.  They were beautiful jewels the great emerald was
+wonderful, and there were two rubies to praise.  She excused herself for
+declining to put the circlet for the pendant round her neck, or a
+glittering ring on her finger.  Her remarks were encomiums, not quite so
+cold as those of a provincial spinster of an ascetic turn at an
+exhibition of the world's flycatcher gewgaws.  He had divided Aminta from
+the Countess of Ormont, and it was the wary Aminta who set a guard on
+looks and tones before the spectacle of his noble bounty, lest any, the
+smallest, payment of the dues of the countess should be demanded.
+Rightly interpreting him to be by nature incapable of asking pardon, or
+acknowledging a wrong done by him, however much he might crave exemption
+from blame and seek for peace, she kept to her mask of injury, though she
+hated unforgivingness; and she felt it little, she did it easily, because
+her heart was dead to the man.  My lord's hand touched her on her
+shoulder, propitiatingly in some degree, in his dumb way.
+
+Offended women can be emotional to a towering pride, that bends while it
+assumes unbendingness: it must come to their sensations, as it were a
+sign of humanity in the majestic, speechless king of beasts; and they are
+pathetically melted, abjectly hypocritical; a nice confusion of
+sentiments, traceable to a tender bosom's appreciation of strength and
+the perceptive compassion for its mortality.
+
+In a case of the alienated wife, whose blood is running another way, no
+foul snake's bite is more poisonous than that indicatory touch, however
+simple and slight.  My lord's hand, lightly laid on Aminta's shoulder,
+became sensible of soft warm flesh stiffening to the skeleton.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A bird that won't roast or boil or stew
+Acting is not of the high class which conceals the art
+Ah! we fall into their fictions
+Bad luck's not repeated every day Keep heart for the good
+Began the game of Pull
+By nature incapable of asking pardon
+Consciousness of some guilt when vowing itself innocent
+Having contracted the fatal habit of irony
+He had to shake up wrath over his grievances
+Her vehement fighting against facts
+His aim to win the woman acknowledged no obstacle in the means
+His restored sense of possession
+How to compromise the matter for the sake of peace?
+I could be in love with her cruelty, if only I had her near me
+Men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations
+Not men of brains, but the men of aptitudes
+Not the indignant and the frozen, but the genially indifferent
+One is a fish to her hook; another a moth to her light
+One night, and her character's gone
+Passion added to a bowl of reason makes a sophist's mess
+Policy seems to petrify their minds
+Rage of a conceited schemer tricked
+Respect one another's affectations
+To time and a wife it is no disgrace for a man to bend
+Uncommon unprogressiveness
+When duelling flourished on our land, frail women powerful
+Where heart weds mind, or nature joins intellect
+With what little wisdom the world is governed
+
+
+
+
+
+LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+BOOK 5.
+
+XXIV.     LOVERS MATED
+XXXV.     PREPARATIONS FOR A RESOLVE
+XXVI.     VISITS OF FAREWELL
+XXVII.    A MARINE DUET
+XXVIII.   THE PLIGHTING
+XXIX.     AMINTA TO HER LORD
+XXX.      CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+LOVERS MATED
+
+He was benevolently martial, to the extent of paternal, in thinking his
+girl, of whom he deigned to think now as his countess, pardonably
+foolish.  Woman for woman, she was of a pattern superior to the world's
+ordinary, and might run the world's elect a race.  But she was pitifully
+woman-like in her increase of dissatisfaction with the more she got.
+Women are happier enslaved.  Men, too, if their despot is an Ormont.
+Colonel of his regiment, he proved that: his men would follow him
+anywhere, do anything.  Grand old days, before he was condemned by one
+knows not what extraordinary round of circumstances to cogitate on women
+as fluids, and how to cut channels for them, that they may course along
+in the direction good for them, imagining it their pretty wanton will to
+go that way!  Napoleon's treatment of women is excellent example.
+Peterborough's can be defended.
+
+His Aminta could not reason.  She nursed a rancour on account of the blow
+she drew on herself at Steignton, and she declined consolation in her
+being pardoned.  The reconcilement evidently was proposed as a finale of
+one of the detestable feminine storms enveloping men weak enough to let
+themselves be dragged through a scene for the sake of domestic
+tranquillity.
+
+A remarkable exhibition of Aminta the woman was, her entire change of
+front since he had taken her spousal chill.  Formerly she was passive,
+merely stately, the chiselled grande dame, deferential in her bearing
+and speech, even when argumentative and having an opinion to plant.
+She had always the independent eye and step; she now had the tongue of
+the graceful and native great lady, fitted to rule her circle and hold
+her place beside the proudest of the Ormonts.  She bore well the small
+shuffle with her jewel-box--held herself gallantly.  There had been no
+female feignings either, affected misapprehensions, gapy ignorances, and
+snaky subterfuges, and the like, familiar to men who have the gentle
+twister in grip.  Straight on the line of the thing to be seen she flew,
+and struck on it; and that is a woman's martial action.  He would right
+heartily have called her comrade, if he had been active himself.
+A warrior pulled off his horse, to sit in a chair and contemplate the
+minute evolutions of the sex is pettish with his part in such battle-
+fields at the stage beyond amusement.
+
+Seen swimming, she charmed him.  Abstract views of a woman summon
+opposite advocates: one can never say positively, That is she!  But the
+visible fair form of a woman is hereditary queen of us.  We have none of
+your pleadings and counter-pleadings and judicial summaries to obstruct a
+ravenous loyalty.  My lord beheld Aminta take her three quick steps on
+the plank, and spring and dive and ascend, shaking the ends of her bound
+black locks; and away she went with shut mouth and broad stroke of her
+arms into the sunny early morning river; brave to see, although he had to
+flick a bee of a question, why he enjoyed the privilege of seeing, and
+was not beside her.  The only answer confessed to a distaste for all
+exercise once pleasurable.
+
+She and her little friend boated or strolled through the meadows during
+the day; he fished.  When he and Aminta rode out for the hour before
+dinner, she seemed pleased.  She was amicable, conversable, all that was
+agreeable as a woman, and she was the chillest of wives.  My lord's
+observations and reflections came to one conclusion: she pricked and
+challenged him to lead up to her desired stormy scene.  He met her and
+meant to vanquish her with the dominating patience Charlotte had found
+too much for her: women cannot stand against it.
+
+To be patient in contention with women, however, one must have a
+continuous and an exclusive occupation; and the tax it lays on us
+conduces usually to impatience with men.  My lord did not directly
+connect Aminta's chillness and Morsfield's impudence; yet the sensation
+roused by his Aminta participated in the desire to punish Morsfield
+speedily.  Without wishing for a duel, he was moved by the social
+sanction it had to consider whether green youths and women might not
+think a grey head had delayed it too long.  The practice of the duel
+begot the peculiar animal logic of the nobler savage, which tends to
+magnify an offence in the ratio of our vanity, and hunger for a blood
+that is not demanded by the appetite.  Moreover, a waning practice, in
+disfavour with the new generation, will be commended to the conservative
+barbarian, as partaking of the wisdom of his fathers.  Further, too, we
+may have grown slothful, fallen to moodiness, done excess of service to
+Omphale, our tyrant lady of the glow and the chill; and then undoubtedly
+the duel braces.
+
+He left Aminta for London, submissive to the terms of intimacy dictated
+by her demeanour, his unacknowledged seniority rendering their harshness
+less hard to endure.  She had not gratified him with a display of her
+person in the glitter of the Ormont jewels; and since he was, under
+common conditions, a speechless man, his ineptitude for amorous
+remonstrances precipitated him upon deeds, that he might offer additional
+proofs of his esteem and the assurance of her established position as his
+countess.  He proposed to engage Lady Charlotte in a conflict severer
+than the foregoing, until he brought her to pay the ceremonial visit to
+her sister-in-law.  The count of time for this final trial of his
+masterfulness he calculated at a week.  It would be an occupation,
+miserable occupation though it was.  He hailed the prospect of chastising
+Morsfield, for a proof that his tussels with women, prolonged study of
+their tricks, manoeuvrings and outwittings of them, had not emasculated
+him.
+
+Aminta willingly promised to write from day to day.  Her senses had his
+absence insured to them by her anticipation of the task.  She did not
+conceive it would be so ponderous a task.  What to write to him when
+nothing occurred!  Nothing did occur, unless the arrival of Mr. Weyburn
+was to be named an event.  She alluded to it: 'Mr. Weyburn has come,
+expecting to find you here.  The dispatch-box is here.  Is he to await
+you?'
+
+That innocent little question was a day gained.
+
+One day of boating on the upper reaches of the pastoral river, and walks
+in woods and golden meadows, was felicity fallen on earth, the ripe fruit
+of dreams.  A dread surrounded it, as a belt, not shadowing the horizon;
+and she clasped it to her heart the more passionately, like a mother her
+rosy infant, which a dark world threatens and the universal fate.
+
+Love, as it will be at her June of life, was teaching her to know the
+good and bad of herself.  Women, educated to embrace principles through
+their timidity and their pudency, discover, amazed, that these are not
+lasting qualities under love's influence.  The blushes and the fears take
+flight.  The principles depend much on the beloved.  Is he a man whose
+contact with the world has given him understanding of life's laws, and
+can hold him firm to the right course in the strain and whirling of a
+torrent, they cling to him, deeply they worship.  And if they tempt him,
+it is not advisedly done.  Nature and love are busy in conjunction.  The
+timidities and pudencies have flown; they may hover, they are not
+present.  You deplore it, you must not blame; you have educated them so.
+Muscular principles are sown only out in the world; and, on the whole,
+with all their errors, the worldly men are the truest as well as the
+bravest of men.  Her faith in his guidance was equal to her dependence.
+The retrospect of a recent journey told her how he had been tried.
+
+She could gaze tenderly, betray her heart, and be certain of safety.
+Can wine match that for joy?  She had no schemes, no hopes, but simply
+the desire to bestow, the capacity to believe.  Any wish to be enfolded
+by him was shapeless and unlighted, unborn; though now and again for some
+chance word or undefined thought she surprised the strange tenant of her
+breast at an incomprehensibly faster beat, and knew it for her own and
+not her own, the familiar the stranger--an utter stranger, as one who had
+snared her in a wreath and was pulling her off her feet.
+
+She was not so guileless at the thought of little Selina Collett here,
+and of Selina as the letter-bearer of old; and the marvel that Matey and
+Browny and Selina were together after all!  Was it not a kind of summons
+to her to call him Matey just once, only once, in play?  She burned and
+ached to do it.  She might have taxed her ingenuity successfully to
+induce little Selina to the boldness of calling him Matey--and she then
+repeating it, as the woman who revived with a meditative effort
+recollections of the girl.  Ah, frightful hypocrite!  Thoughts of the
+pleasure of his name aloud on her lips in his hearing dissolved through
+her veins, and were met by Matthew Weyburn's open face, before which
+hypocrisy stood rent and stripped.  She preferred the calmer, the truer
+pleasure of seeing him modestly take lessons in the nomenclature of
+weeds, herbs, grasses, by hedge and ditch.  Selina could instruct him as
+well in entomology, but he knew better the Swiss, Tyrolese, and Italian
+valley-homes of beetle and butterfly species.  Their simple talk was a
+cool zephyr fanning Aminta.
+
+The suggestion to unite the two came to her, of course, but their
+physical disparity denied her that chance to settle her own difficulty,
+and a whisper of one physically the match for him punished her.  In
+stature, in healthfulness, they were equals, perhaps: not morally or
+intellectually.  And she could claim headship of him on one little point
+confided to her by his mother, who was bearing him, and startled by the
+boom of guns under her pillow, when her husband fronted the enemy:
+Matthew Weyburn, the fencer, boxer, cricketer, hunter, all things manly,
+rather shrank from firearms--at least, one saw him put on a screw to
+manipulate them.  In danger--among brigands or mutineers, for example--
+she could stand by him and prove herself his mate.  Intellectually,
+morally, she had to bow humbly.  Nor had she, nor could she do more than
+lean on and catch example from his prompt spiritual valiancy.  It shone
+out from him, and a crisis fulfilled the promise.  Who could be his mate
+for cheerful courage, for skill, the ready mind, easy adroitness, and for
+self-command?  To imitate was a woman's utmost.
+
+Matthew Weyburn appeared the very Matey of the first of May cricketing
+day among Cuper's boys the next morning, when seen pacing down the
+garden-walk.  He wore his white trousers of that happiest of old days--
+the 'white ducks' Aminta and Selina remembered.  Selina beamed.  'Yes, he
+did; he always wore them; but now it's a frock-coat instead of a jacket.'
+
+'But now he will be a master instead of a schoolboy,' said Aminta.
+'Let us hope he will prosper.'
+
+'He gives me the idea of a man who must succeed,' Selina said; and she
+was patted, rallied, asked how she had the idea, and kissed; Aminta
+saying she fancied it might be thought, for he looked so confident.
+
+'Only not what the boys used to call "cocky,"' said Selina.  'He won't be
+contemptuous of those he outstrips.'
+
+'His choice of the schoolmaster's profession points to a modesty in him,
+does it not, little woman?'
+
+'He made me tell him, while you were writing your letters yesterday, all
+about my brother and his prospects.'
+
+'Yes, that is like him.  And I must hear of your brother, "little
+Collett."  Don't forget, Sely, little Collett was our postman.'
+
+The Countess of Ormont's humorous reference to the circumstance passed
+with Selina for a sign of a poetic love of the past, and a present social
+elevation that allowed her to review it impassively.  She admired the
+great lady and good friend who could really be interested in the fortunes
+of a mere schoolmaster and a merchant's clerk.  To her astonishment, by
+some agency beyond her fathoming, she found herself, and hardly for her
+own pleasure, pushing the young schoolmaster animatedly to have an
+account of his aims in the establishment of the foreign school.
+
+Weyburn smiled.  He set a short look at Aminta; and she, conscious of her
+detected diplomacy, had an inward shiver, mixed of the fascination and
+repugnance felt by a woman who knows that under one man's eyes her
+character is naked and anatomized.  Her character?--her soul.  He held it
+in hand and probed it mercifully.  She had felt the sweet sting again and
+again, and had shrunk from him, and had crawled to him.  The love of him
+made it all fascination.  How did he learn to read at any moment right to
+the soul of a woman?  Did experience teach him, or sentimental sympathy?
+He was too young, he was too manly.  It must be because of his being in
+heart and mind the brother to the sister with women.
+
+Thames played round them on his pastoral pipes.  Bee-note and woodside
+blackbird and meadow cow, and the fish of the silver rolling rings,
+composed the leap of the music.
+
+She gave her mind to his voice, following whither it went; half was in
+air, higher than the swallow's, exalting him.
+
+How is it he is the brother of women?  They are sisters for him because
+he is neither sentimentalist nor devourer.  He will not flatter to feed
+on them.  The one he chooses, she will know love.  There are women who go
+through life not knowing love.  They are inanimate automatic machines,
+who lay them down at last, inquiring wherefore they were caused to move.
+She is not of that sad flock.  She will be mated; she will have the right
+to call him Matey.  A certain Browny called him Matey.  She lived and
+died.  A certain woman apes Browny's features and inherits her passion,
+but has forfeited her rights.  Were she, under happiest conditions,
+to put her hand in his, shame would burn her.  For he is just--he is
+Justice; and a woman bringing him less than his due, she must be a
+creature of the slime!
+
+This was the shadowy sentiment that made the wall of division between
+them.  There was no other.  Lord Ormont had struck to fragments that
+barrier of the conventional oath and ceremonial union.  He was unjust--
+he was Injustice.  The weak may be wedded, they cannot be married; to
+Injustice.  And if we have the world for the buttress of injustice, then
+is Nature the flaring rebel; there is no fixed order possible.  Laws are
+necessary instruments of the majority; but when they grind the sane human
+being to dust for their maintenance, their enthronement is the rule of
+the savage's old deity, sniffing blood-sacrifice.  There cannot be a
+based society upon such conditions.  An immolation of the naturally
+constituted individual arrests the general expansion to which we step,
+decivilizes more, and is more impious to the God in man, than temporary
+revelries of a licence that Nature soon checks.
+
+Arrows of thoughts resembling these shot over the half of Aminta's mind
+not listening.  Her lover's head was active on the same theme while he
+spoke.  They converged to it from looks crossing or catching profiles,
+or from tones, from a motion of hand, from a chance word.  Insomuch that
+the third person present was kept unobservant only by her studious and
+humble speculations on the young schoolmaster's grand project to bring
+the nationalities together, and teach Old England to the Continent--the
+Continent to Old England: our healthy games, our scorn of the lie,
+manliness; their intellectual valour, diligence, considerate manners.
+
+'Just to name a few of the things for interchange,' said Weyburn.  'As to
+method, we shall be their disciples.  But I look forward to our fellows
+getting the lead.  No hurry.  Why will they? you ask in petto.  Well,
+they 're emulous, and they take a thrashing kindly.  That 's the way to
+learn a lesson.  I 've seen our fellows beaten and beaten--never the
+courage beaten out of them.  In the end, they won and kept the field.
+They have a lot to learn--principally not to be afraid of ideas.  They
+lose heaps of time before they can feel at home with ideas.  They call
+themselves practical for having an addiction to the palpable.  It is a
+pretty wreath they clap on their deficiencies.  Practical dogs are for
+bones, horses for corn.  I want the practical Englishman to settle his
+muzzle in a nosebag of ideas.  When he has once got hold of them, he
+makes good stuff of them.  On the Continent ideas have wings and pay
+visits.  Here, they're stay-at-home.  Then I want our fellows to have the
+habit of speaking from the chest.  They shall return to England with the
+whoop of the mountains in them and ready to jump out.  They shall have
+an Achillean roar; and they shall sing by second nature.  Don't fear:
+they'll give double for anything they take.  I've known Italians, to whom
+an Englishman's honesty of mind and dealing was one of the dreams of a
+better humanity they had put in a box.  Frenchmen, too, who, when they
+came to know us, were astonished at their epithet of perfide, and loved
+us.'
+
+'Emile,' said Aminta.  'You remember Emile, Selina: the dear little
+French boy at Mr. Cuper's?'
+
+'Oh, I do,' Selina responded.
+
+'He will work with Mr. Weyburn in Switzerland.'
+
+'Oh, that will be nice!' the girl exclaimed.
+
+Aminta squeezed Selina's hand.  A shower of tears clouded her eyes.  She
+chose to fancy it was because of her envy of the modest, busy, peaceful
+girl, who envied none.  Conquers also sincerity in the sincerest.  She
+was vexed with her full breast, and had as little command of her thoughts
+as of her feelings.
+
+'Mr. Weyburn has ideas for the education of girls too,' she said.
+
+'There's the task,' said he.  'It's to separate them as little as
+possible.  All the--passez-moi le mot--devilry between the sexes begins
+at their separation.  They 're foreigners when they meet; and their
+alliances are not always binding.  The chief object in life, if happiness
+be the aim, and the growing better than we are, is to teach men and women
+how to be one; for, if they 're not, then each is a morsel for the other
+to prey on.  Lady Charlotte Eglett's view is, that the greater number of
+them on both sides hate one another.'
+
+'Hate!' exclaimed Selina; and Aminta said: 'Is Lady Charlotte Eglett an
+authority?'
+
+'She has observed, and she thinks.  She has in the abstract the justest
+of minds: and that is the curious point about her.  But one may say they
+are trained at present to be hostile.  Some of them fall in love and
+strike a truce, and still they are foreigners.  They have not the same
+standard of honour.  They might have it from an education in common.'
+
+'But there must be also a lady to govern the girls?' Selina interposed.
+
+'Ah, yes; she is not yet found!'
+
+'Would it increase their mutual respect?--or show of respect, if you
+like?' said Aminta, with his last remark at work as the shattering bell
+of a city's insurrection in her breast.
+
+'In time, under management; catching and grouping them young.  A boy who
+sees a girl do what he can't, and would like to do, won't take refuge in
+his muscular superiority--which, by the way, would be lessened.'
+
+'You suppose their capacities are equal?'
+
+'Things are not equal.  I suppose their excellencies to make a pretty
+nearly equal sum in the end.  But we 're not weighing them each.  The
+question concerns the advantage of both.'
+
+'That seems just!'
+
+Aminta threw no voice into the word 'just.' It was the word of the
+heavens assuaging earth's thirst, and she was earth to him.  Her soul
+yearned to the man whose mind conceived it.
+
+She said to Selina: 'We must plan an expedition next year or the year
+after, and see how the school progresses.'
+
+All three smiled; and Selina touched and held Aminta's hand shyly.
+Visions of the unseen Switzerland awed her.
+
+Weyburn named the Spring holiday time, the season of the flowering Alpine
+robes.  He promised welcome, pressed for a promise of the visit.  Warmly
+it was given.  'We will; we will indeed!'
+
+'I shall look forward,' he said.
+
+There was nothing else for him or for her, except to doat on the passing
+minute that slipped when seized.  The looking forward turned them to the
+looking back at the point they had flown from, and yielded a momentary
+pleasure, enough to stamp some section of a picture on their memories,
+which was not the burning now Love lives for, in the clasp, if but of
+hands.  Desire of it destroyed it.  They swung to the future, swung to
+the present it made the past, sensible to the quick of the now they could
+not hold.  They were lovers.  Divided lovers in presence, they thought
+and they felt in pieces.  Feelings and thoughts were forbidden to speech.
+She dared look the very little of her heart's fulness, without the
+disloyalty it would have been in him to let a small peep of his heart be
+seen.  While her hand was not clasped she could look tenderly, and her
+fettered state, her sense of unworthiness muffled in the deeps, would
+keep her from the loosening to passion.
+
+He who read through her lustrous, transiently dwelling eyes had not that
+security.  His part, besides the watch over the spring of his hot blood,
+was to combat a host, insidious among which was unreason calling her
+Browny, urging him to take his own, to snatch her from a possessor who
+forfeited by undervaluing her.  This was the truth in a better-ordered
+world: she belonged to the man who could help her to grow and to do her
+work.  But in the world we have around us, it was the distorted truth:
+and keeping passion down, he was able to wish her such happiness as
+pertained to safety from shipwreck, and for himself, that he might
+continue to walk in the ranks of the sober citizens.
+
+Oh, true and right, but she was gloriously beautiful!  Day by day she
+surpassed the wondrous Browny of old days.  All women were eclipsed by
+her.  She was that fire in the night which lights the night and draws the
+night to look at it.  And more: this queen of women was beginning to have
+a mind at work.  One saw already the sprouting of a mind repressed.  She
+had a distinct ability; the good ambition to use her qualities.  She
+needed life and air--that is, comprehension of her, encouragement, the
+companion mate.  With what strength would she now endow him!  The pride
+in the sharp imagination of possessing her whispered a boast of the
+strength her mate would have from her.  His need and her need rushed
+together somewhere down the skies.  They could not, he argued, be
+separated eternally.
+
+He had to leave her.  Selina, shocked at a boldness she could not
+understand in herself, begged him to stay and tell her of Switzerland
+and Alpine flowers and herbs, and the valleys for the gold beetle and
+the Apollo butterfly.  Aminta hinted that Lord Ormont might expect to
+find him there, if he came the next morning; but she would not try to
+persuade, and left the decision with him, loving him for the pain he
+inflicted by going.
+
+Why, indeed, should he stay?  Both could ask; they were one in asking.
+Anguish balanced pleasure in them both.  The day of the pleasure was
+heaven to remember, heaven to hope for; not so heavenly to pray for.
+The praying for it, each knew, implored their joint will to decree the
+perilous blessing.  A shadowy sentiment of duty and rectitude, born of
+what they had suffered, hung between them and the prayer for a renewal,
+that would renew the tempting they were conscious of when the sweet, the
+strained, throbbing day was over.  They could hope for chance to renew
+it, and then they would be irresponsible.  Then they would think and wish
+discreetly, so as to have it a happiness untainted.  In refusing now to
+take another day or pray for it, they deserved that chance should grant
+it.
+
+Aminta had said through Selina the utmost her self-defences could allow.
+But the idea of a final parting cut too cruelly into her life, and she
+murmured: 'I shall see you before you go for good?'
+
+'I will come, here or in London.'
+
+'I can trust?'
+
+'Quite certain.'
+
+A meeting of a few hasty minutes involved none of the dangers of a sunny,
+long summer day; and if it did, the heart had its claims, the heart had
+its powers of resistance.  Otherwise we should be base verily.
+
+He turned on a bow to leave her before there was a motion for the offer
+of her hand.
+
+After many musings and frettings, she reached the wisdom of that.  Wisdom
+was her only nourishment now.  A cold, lean dietary it is; but he
+dispensed it, and it fed her, or kept her alive.  It became a proud
+feeling that she had been his fellow in the achievement of a piece of
+wisdom; though the other feeling, that his hand's kind formal touching,
+without pressure of hers, would have warmed her to go through the next
+interview with her lord, mocked at pure satisfaction.  Did he distrust
+himself?  Or was it to spare her?  But if so, her heart was quite bare
+to him!  But she knew it was.
+
+Aminta drove her questioning heart as a vessel across blank circles of
+sea, where there was nothing save the solitary heart for answer.  It
+answered intelligibly and comfortingly at last, telling her of proof
+given that she could repose under his guidance with absolute faith.  Was
+ever loved woman more blest than she in such belief?  She had it firmly;
+and a blessedness, too, in this surety wavering beneath shadows of the
+uncertainty.  Her eyes knew it, her ears were empty of the words.  Her
+heart knew it, and it was unconfirmed by reason.  As for his venturing to
+love her, he feared none.  And no sooner did that reflection surge than
+she stood up beside him in revolt against her lion and lord.  Her
+instinct judged it impossible she could ever have yielded her heart to
+a man lacking courage.  Hence--what? when cowardice appeared as the sole
+impediment to happiness now!
+
+He had gone, and the day lived again for both of them--a day of sheer
+gold in the translation from troubled earth to the mind.  One another's
+beauty through the visage into the character was newly perceived and
+worshipped; and the beauties of pastoral Thames, the temple of peace,
+hardly noticed in the passing of the day--taken as air to the breather;
+until some chip of the scene, round which an emotion had curled, was
+vivid foreground and gateway to shrouded romance: it might be the
+stream's white face browning into willow-droopers, or a wagtail on a
+water-lily leaf, or the fore-horse of an up-river barge at strain of
+legs, a red-finned perch hung a foot above the pebbles in sun-veined
+depths, a kingfisher on the scud under alders, the forest of the bankside
+weeds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+PREPARATIONS FOR A RESOLVE
+
+That day receded like a spent billow, and lapsed among the others
+advancing, but it left a print deeper than events would have stamped.
+Aminta's pen declined to run to her lord; and the dipping it in ink was
+no acceleration of the process.  A sentence, bearing likeness to an
+artless infant's trot of the half-dozen steps to mother's lap, stumbled
+upon the full stop midway.  Desperate determination pushed it along, and
+there was in consequence a dead stop at the head of the next sentence.
+A woman whose nature is insurgent against the majesty of the man to whom
+she must, among the singular injunctions binding her, regularly write,
+sees no way between hypocrisy and rebellion.  For rebellion, she, with
+the pen in her hand, is avowedly not yet ripe, hypocrisy is abominable.
+
+If she abstained from writing, he might travel down to learn the cause;
+a similar danger, or worse, haunted the writing frigidly.  She had to be
+the hypocrite or else--leap.
+
+But an honest woman who is a feeling woman, when she consents to play
+hypocrite, cannot do it by halves.  From writing a short cold letter,
+Aminta wrote a short warm one, or very friendly.  Length she could avoid,
+because she was unable to fill a page.  It seemed that she could not
+compose a friendly few lines without letting her sex be felt in them.
+What she had put away from her, so as not to feel it herself, the
+simulation of ever so small a bit of feeling brought prominently back;
+and where she had made a cast for flowing independent simplicity, she
+was feminine, ultra-feminine to her reading of it.
+
+Better take the leap than be guilty of double-dealing even on paper!
+The nature of the leap she did not examine.
+
+Her keen apprehension of the price payable for his benevolent intentions
+caught scent of them in the air.  Those Ormont jewels shone as emblems of
+a detested subjection, the penalty for being the beautiful woman rageing
+men proclaimed.  Was there no scheme of some other sort, and far less
+agreeable, to make amends for Steignton?  She was shrewd at divination;
+she guessed her lord's design.  Rather than meet Lady Charlotte, she
+proposed to herself the 'leap' immediately; knowing it must be a leap in
+the dark, hoping it might be into a swimmer's water.  She had her own
+pin-money income, and she loathed the chain of her title.  So the leap
+would at least be honourable, as it assuredly would be unregretted,
+whatever ensued.
+
+While Aminta's heart held on to this debate, and in her bed, in her boat,
+across the golden valley meadows beside her peaceful little friend, she
+gathered a gradual resolution without sight of agencies or consequences,
+Lord Ormont was kept from her by the struggle to master his Charlotte a
+second time--compared with which the first was insignificant.  And this
+time it was curious: he could not subdue her physique, as he did before;
+she was ready for him each day, and she was animated, much more voluble,
+she was ready to jest.  The reason being, that she fought now on
+plausibly good grounds: on behalf of her independent action.
+
+Previously, her intelligence of the ultimate defeat hanging over the more
+stubborn defence of a weak position had harassed her to death's door.
+She had no right to retain the family jewels; she had the most perfect of
+established rights to refuse doing an ignominious thing.  She refused to
+visit the so-called Countess of Ormont, or leave her card, or take one
+step to warrant the woman in speaking of her as her sister-in-law.  And
+no,--it did not signify that her brother Rowsley was prohibited by her
+from marrying whom he pleased.  It meant, that to judge of his acts as
+those of a reasoning man, he would have introduced his wife to his
+relatives--the relatives he had not quarrelled with--immediately upon his
+marriage unless he was ashamed of the woman; and a wife he was ashamed of
+was no sister-in-law for her nor aunt for her daughters.  Nor should she
+come playing the Black Venus among her daughters' husbands, Lady
+Charlotte had it in her bosom to say additionally.
+
+Lord Ormont was disconcerted by her manifest pleasure in receiving him
+every day.  Evidently she consented to the recurrence of a vexatious
+dissension for the enjoyment of having him with her hourly.  Her
+dialectic, too, was cunning.  Impetuous with meaning, she forced her
+way to get her meaning out, in a manner effective to strike her blow.
+Anything for a diversion or a triumph of the moment!  He made no way.
+She was the better fencer at the tongue.
+
+Yet there was not any abatement of her deference to her brother; and this
+little misunderstanding put aside, he was the Rowsley esteemed by her as
+the chief of men.  She foiled him, it might seem, to exalt him the more.
+After he had left the house, visibly annoyed and somewhat stupefied, she
+talked of him to her husband, of the soul of chivalry Rowsley was, the
+loss to his country.  Mr. Eglett was a witness to one of the
+altercations, when she, having as usual the dialectical advantage,
+praised her brother, to his face, for his magnanimous nature; regretting
+only that it could be said he was weak on the woman side of him--which
+was, she affirmed, a side proper to every man worth the name; but in his
+case his country might complain.  Of what?--Well, of a woman.--What had
+she done, for the country to complain of her?--Why, then, arts or graces,
+she had bewitched and weaned him from his public duty, his military
+service, his patriotic ambition.
+
+Lord Ormont's interrogations, heightening the effect of Charlotte's
+charge, appeared to Mr. Eglett as a giving of himself over into her
+hands; but the earl, after a minute of silence, proved he was a tricky
+combatant.  It was he who had drawn on Charlotte, that he might have his
+opportunity to eulogize--'this lady, whom you continue to call the woman,
+after I have told you she is my wife.'  According to him, her appeals,
+her entreaties, that he should not abandon his profession or let his
+ambition rust, had been at one period constant.
+
+He spoke fervently, for him eloquently; and he gained his point; he
+silenced Lady Charlotte's tongue, and impressed Mr. Eglett.
+
+When the latter and his wife were alone, he let her see that the Countess
+of Ormont was becoming a personage in his consideration.
+
+Lady Charlotte cried out: 'Hear these men where it's a good-looking woman
+between the winds!  Do you take anything Rowsley says for earnest?  You
+ought to know he stops at no trifle to get his advantage over you in a
+dispute.  That 's the soldier in him.  It 's victory at any cost!--and I
+like him for it.  Do you tell me you think it possible my brother Rowsley
+would keep smothered years under a bushel the woman he can sit here
+magnifying because he wants to lime you and me: you to take his part, and
+me to go and call the noble creature decked out in his fine fiction my
+sister-in-law.  Nothing 'll tempt me to believe my brother could behave
+in such a way to the woman he respected!'
+
+So Mr. Eglett opined.  But he had been impressed.
+
+He relieved his mind on the subject in a communication to Lord Adderwood;
+who habitually shook out the contents of his to Mrs. Lawrence Finchley,
+and she, deeming it good for Aminta to have information of the war waging
+for her behoof, obtained her country address, with the resolve to drive
+down, a bearer of good news to the dear woman she liked to think of, look
+at, and occasionally caress; besides rather tenderly pitying her, now
+that a change of fortune rendered her former trials conspicuous.
+
+An incident, considered grave even in the days of the duel and the kicks
+against a swelling public reprehension of the practice, occurred to
+postpone her drive for four-and-twenty hours.  London was shaken by
+rumours of a tragic mishap to a socially well-known gentleman at the
+Chiallo fencing rooms.  The rumours passing from mouth to mouth acquired,
+in the nature of them, sinister colours as they circulated.  Lord Ormont
+sent Aminta word of what he called 'a bad sort of accident at Chiallo's,'
+without mentioning names or alluding to suspicions.
+
+He treated it lightly.  He could not have written of it with such
+unconcern if it involved the secretary!  Yet Aminta did seriously ask
+herself whether he could; and she flew rapidly over the field of his
+character, seizing points adverse, points favourably advocative,
+balancing dubiously--most unjustly: she felt she was unjust.  But in her
+condition, the heart of a woman is instantly planted in jungle when the
+spirits of the two men closest to her are made to stand opposed by a
+sudden excitement of her fears for the beloved one.  She cannot see
+widely, and is one of the wild while the fit lasts; and, after it, that
+savage narrow vision she had of the unbeloved retains its vivid print in
+permanence.  Was she unjust?  Aminta cited corroboration of her being
+accurate: such was Lord Ormont! and although his qualities of gallantry,
+courtesy, integrity, honourable gentleman, presented a fair low-level
+account on the other side, she had so stamped his massive selfishness
+and icy inaccessibility to emotion on her conception of him that the
+repulsive figure formed by it continued towering when her mood was
+kinder.
+
+Love played on love in the woman's breast.  Her love had taken a fever
+from her lord's communication of the accident at Chiallo's, and she
+pushed her alarm to imagine the deadliest, and plead for the right of
+confession to herself of her unrepented regrets.  She and Matey Weyburn
+had parted without any pressure of hands, without a touch.  They were,
+then, unplighted if now the grave divided them!  No touch: mere glances!
+And she sighed not, as she pleaded, for the touch, but for the plighting
+it would have been.  If now she had lost him, he could never tell herself
+that since the dear old buried and night-walking schooldays she had said
+once Matey to him, named him once to his face Matey Weyburn.  A sigh like
+the roll of a great wave breaking against a wall of rock came from her
+for the possibly lost chance of naming him to his face Matey,--oh, and
+seeing his look as she said it!
+
+The boldness might be fancied: it could not be done.  Agreeing with the
+remote inner voice of her reason so far, she toned her exclamatory
+foolishness to question, in Reason's plain, deep, basso-profundo
+accompaniment tone, how much the most blessed of mortal women could
+do to be of acceptable service to a young schoolmaster?
+
+There was no reply to the question.  But it became a nestling centre for
+the skiey flock of dreams, and for really temperate soundings of her
+capacities, tending to the depreciatory.  She could do little.  She
+entertained the wish to work, not only 'for the sake of Somebody,' as her
+favourite poet sang, but for the sake of working and serving--proving
+that she was helpfuller than a Countess of Ormont, ranged with all the
+other countesses in china and Dresden on a drawing-room mantelpiece for
+show.  She could organize, manage a household, manage people too, she
+thought: manage a husband?  The word offends.  Perhaps invigorate him,
+here and there perhaps inspire him, if he would let her breathe.
+Husbands exist who refuse the right of breathing to their puppet wives.
+Above all, as it struck her, she could assist, and be more than an echo
+of one nobler, in breathing manliness, high spirit, into boys.  With that
+idea she grazed the shallows of reality, and her dreams whirred from the
+nest and left it hungrily empty.
+
+Selina Collett was writing under the verandah letters to her people in
+Suffolk, performing the task with marvellous ease.  Aminta noted it as a
+mark of superior ability, and she had the envy of the complex nature
+observing the simple.  It accused her of some guiltiness, uncommitted and
+indefensible.  She had pushed her anxiety about 'the accident at
+Chiallo's' to an extreme that made her the creature of her sensibilities.
+In the midst of this quiet country life and landscape; these motionless
+garden flowers headed by the smooth white river, and her gentle little
+friend so homely here, the contemplation of herself was like a shriek in
+music.  Worse than discordant, she pronounced herself inferior, unfit
+mentally as well as bodily for the dreams of companionship with any noble
+soul who might have the dream of turning her into something better.
+There are couples in the world, not coupled by priestly circumstance, who
+are close to the true; union, by reason of generosity on the one part,
+grateful devotion, as for the gift of life, on the other.  For instance,
+Mrs. Lawrence Finchley and Lord Adderwood, which was an instance without
+resemblance; but Aminta's heart beat thick for what it wanted, and they
+were the instance of two that did not have to snap false bonds of a
+marriage-tie in order to walk together composedly outside it--in honour?
+Oh yes, yes!  She insisted on believing it was in honour.
+
+She saw the couple issue from the boathouse.  She had stepped into the
+garden full of a presentiment; so she fancied, the moment they were seen.
+She had, in fact, heard a noise in the boathouse while thinking of them,
+and the effect on her was to spring an idea of mysterious interventions
+at the sight.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence rushed to her, and was embraced.  'You 're not astonished
+to see me?  Adder drove me down, and stopped his coach at the inn, and
+rowed me the half-mile up.  We will lunch, if you propose; but presently.
+My dear, I have to tell you things.  You have heard?'
+
+'The accident?'
+
+Aminta tried to read in Mrs. Lawrence's eyes whether it closely concerned
+her.
+
+Those pretty eyes, their cut of lids hinting at delicate affinities with
+the rice-paper lady of the court of China, were trying to peer
+seriously.
+
+'Poor man! One must be sorry for him: he--'
+
+'Who?'
+
+'You 've not heard, then?' Mrs. Lawrence dropped her voice: 'Morsfield.'
+
+Aminta shivered.  'All I have heard-half a line from my lord this
+morning: no name.  It was at the fencing-rooms, he said.'
+
+'Yes, he wouldn't write more;' said Mrs. Lawrence, nodding.  'You know,
+he would have had to do it himself if it had not been done for him.
+Adder saw him some days back in a brown consultation near his club with
+Captain May.  Oh, but of course it was accident!  Did he call it so in
+his letter to you?'
+
+'One word of Mr. Morsfield: he is wounded?'
+
+'Past cure: he has the thing he cried for, spoilt boy as he was from his
+birth.  I tell you truth, m' Aminta, I grieve to lose him.  What with his
+airs of the foreign-tinted, punctilious courtly gentleman covering a
+survival of the ancient British forest boar or bear, he was a picture in
+our modern set, and piquant.  And he was devoted to our sex, we must
+admit, after the style of the bears.  They are for honey, and they have a
+hug.  If he hadn't been so much of a madman, I should have liked him for
+his courage.  He had plenty of that, nothing to steer it.  A second
+cousin comes in for his estates.'
+
+'He is dead?' Aminta cried.
+
+'Yes, dear, he is gone.  What the women think of it I can't say.  The
+general feeling among the men is that some one of them would have had to
+send him sooner or later.  The curious point, Adder says, is his letting
+it be done by steel.  He was a dead shot, dangerous with the small sword,
+as your Mr. Weyburn said, only soon off his head.  But I used to be
+anxious about the earl's meeting him with pistols.  He did his best to
+provoke it.  Here, Adder,'--she spoke over her shoulder,--'tell Lady
+Ormont all you know of the Morsfield-May affair.'
+
+Lord Adderwood bowed compliance.  His coolness was the masculine of Mrs.
+Lawrence's hardly feminine in treating of a terrible matter, so that the
+dull red facts had to be disengaged from his manner of speech before they
+sank into Aminta's acceptance; of them as credible.
+
+'They fought with foils, buttons off, preliminary ceremonies perfect;
+salute in due order; guard, and at it.
+
+Odd thing was, nobody at Chiallo's had a notion of the business till
+Morsfield was pinked.  He wouldn't be denied; went to work like a fellow
+meaning to be skewered, if he couldn't do the trick: and he tried it.
+May had been practising some weeks.  He's well on the Continent by this
+time.  It'll blow over.  Button off sheer accident.  I wasn't lucky
+enough to see the encounter: came in just when Chiallo was lashing his
+poll over Morsfield flat on the ground.  He had it up to the hilt.  We
+put a buttoned foil by the side of Morsfield, and all swore to secrecy.
+As it is, it 'll go badly against poor Chiallo.  Taste for fencing won't
+be much improved by the affair.  They quarrelled in the dressing room,
+and fetched the foils and knocked off the buttons there.  A big rascal
+toady squire of Morsfield's did it for him.  Morsfield was just up from
+Yorkshire.  He said he was expecting a summons elsewhere, bound to await
+it, declined provocation for the present.  May filliped him on the
+cheek.'
+
+'Adder conveyed the information of her husband's flight to the consolable
+Amy,' said Mrs. Lawrence.
+
+'He had to catch the coach for Dover,' Adderwood explained.  'His wife
+was at a dinner-party.  I saw her at midnight.'
+
+'Fair Amy was not so very greatly surprised?'
+
+'Quite the soldier's wife!'
+
+'She said she was used to these little catastrophes.  But, Adder, what
+did she say of her husband?'
+
+'Said she was never anxious about him, for nothing would kill him.'
+
+Mrs. Lawrence shook a doleful head at Aminta.
+
+'You see, my dear Aminta, here's another, and probably her last, chance
+of sharing the marquisate gone.  Who can fail to pity her, except old
+Time!  And I 'm sure she likes her husband well enough.  She ought: no
+woman ever had such a servant.  But the captain has not been known to
+fight without her sanction, and the inference is--'Alas!  woe!  Fair Amy
+is doomed to be the fighting captain's bride to the end of the chapter.
+Adder says she looked handsome.  A dinner-party suits her cosmetic
+complexion better than a ball.  The account of the inquest is in the
+day's papers, and we were tolerably rejoiced we could drive out of London
+without having to reply to coroner's questions.'
+
+'He died-soon?' Aminta's voice was shaken.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence touched at her breast, it might be for heart or lungs.
+Judging by Aminta's voice and face, one could suppose she was harking
+back, in woman's way, to her original sentiment for the man, now that he
+lay prostrate.
+
+Aminta read the unreproachful irony in the smile addressed to her.  She
+was too convulsed by her many emotions and shouting thoughts to think of
+defending herself.
+
+Selina, in the drawing-room, diligently fingered and classed brown-black
+pressed weeds of her neophyte's botany-folios.  The sight of her and her
+occupation struck Aminta as that of a person in another world beyond this
+world of blood, strangely substantial to view; and one heard her speak.
+
+Guilty?--no.  But she had wished to pique her lord.  After the term of a
+length of months, could it be that the unhappy man and she were punished
+for the half-minute's acting of some interest in him?  And Lord Ormont
+had been seen consulting Captain May; or was it giving him directions?
+
+Her head burned.  All the barren interrogations were up, running and
+knocking for hollow responses; and, saving a paleness of face, she
+cloaked any small show of the riot.  She was an amiable hostess.  She had
+ceased to comprehend Mrs. Lawrence, even to the degree of thinking her
+unfeminine.  She should have known that the 'angelical chimpanzee,' as a
+friend, once told of his being a favourite with the lady, had called her,
+could not simulate a feeling, and had not the slightest power of pretence
+to compassion for an ill-fated person who failed to quicken her
+enthusiasm.  In that, too, she was a downright boy.  Morsfield was a kind
+of Bedlamite to her; amusing in his antics, and requiring to be
+manoeuvred and eluded while he lived: once dead, just a tombstone, of
+interest only to his family.
+
+She beckoned Aminta to follow her; and, with a smirk of indulgent fun,
+commended Lord Adderwood to a study of Selina Collett's botany-folios,
+which the urbanest of indifferent gentlemen had slid his eyes over his
+nose to inspect before the lunch.
+
+'You ought to know what is going on in town, my dear Aminta.  You have
+won the earl to a sense of his duty, and he 's at work on the harder task
+of winning Lady Charlotte Eglett to a sense of hers.  It 's tremendous.
+Has been forward some days, and no sign of yielding on either side.  Mr.
+Eglett, good man, is between them, catching it right and left; and he
+deserves his luck for marrying her.  Vows she makes him the best of
+wives.  If he 's content, I 've nothing to complain of.  You must be
+ready to receive her; my lord is sure to carry the day.  You gulp.  You
+won't be seeing much of her.  I 'm glad to say he is condescending to
+terms of peace with the Horse Guards.  We hear so.  You may be throning
+it officially somewhere next year.  And all 's well that ends well!  Say
+that to me!'
+
+'It is, when the end comes,' Aminta replied.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence's cool lips were pressed to her cheek.  The couple and
+their waterman rowed away to the party they had left with the four-in-
+hand at their inn.
+
+A wind was rising.  The trees gave their swish of leaves, the river
+darkened the patch of wrinkles, the bordering flags amid the reed-blades
+dipped and streamed.
+
+Surcharged with unassimilated news of events, that made a thunder in her
+head, Aminta walked down the garden path, meeting Selina and bearing her
+on.  She had a witch's will to rouse gales.  Hers was not the woman's
+nature to be driven cowering by stories of men's bloody deeds.  She took
+the field, revolted, dissevering herself from the class which tolerated
+them--actuated by a reflective moralty, she believed; and loathed herself
+for having aspired, schemed, to be a member of the class.  But it was not
+the class, it was against her lord as representative of the class,
+that she was now the rebel, neither naming him nor imaging him.  Her
+enveloping mind was black on him.  Such as one of those hard slaughtering
+men could call her his own?  She breathed short and breathed deep.  Her
+bitter reason had but the common pity for a madman despatched to his
+rest.  Yet she knew hatred of her lord in his being suspected as
+instigator or accomplice of the hand that dealt the blow.  He became to
+her thought a python whose coils were about her person, insufferable to
+the gaze backward.
+
+Moments like these are the mothers in travail of a resolve joylessly
+conceived, undesired to clasp, Necessity's offspring.  Thunderclouds have
+as little love of the lightnings they fling.
+
+Aminta was aware only of her torment.  The trees were bending, the water
+hissing, the grasses all this way and that, like hands of a delirious
+people in surges of wreck.  She scorned the meaningless shake of the
+garments of earth, and exclaimed: 'If we were by the sea to-night!'
+
+'I shall be to-morrow night,' said Selina.  'I shall think of you.  Oh!
+would you come with me?'
+
+'Would you have me?'
+
+'My mother will indeed be honoured by your consenting to come.'
+
+'Write to her before the post is out.'
+
+'We shall travel down together?'
+
+Aminta nodded and smiled, and Selina kissed her hand in joy, saying, that
+down home she would not be so shy of calling her Aminta.  She was bidden
+to haste.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+VISITS OF FAREWELL
+
+The noise in London over Adolphus Morsfield's tragical end disturbed Lord
+Ormont much less than the cessation of letters from his Aminta; and that
+likewise, considering his present business on her behalf, he patiently
+shrugged at and pardoned, foreseeing her penitent air.  He could do it
+lightly after going some way to pardon his offending country.  For Aminta
+had not offended, his robust observation of her was moved to the kindly
+humorous by a reflective view here and there of the downright woman her
+clever little shuffles exposed her to be, not worse.  It was her sex that
+made her one of the gliders in grasses, some of whom are venomous; but
+she belonged to the order only as an innocuous blindworm.  He could
+pronounce her small by-play with Morsfield innocent, her efforts to climb
+the stairs into Society quite innocent; judging her, of course, by her
+title of woman.  A woman's innocence has a rainbow skin.  Set this one
+beside other women, she comes out well, fairly well, well enough.
+
+Now that the engagement with Charlotte assumed proportions of a series of
+battle, properly to be entitled a campaign, he had, in his loneliness,
+fallen into the habit of reflecting at the close of his day's work; and
+the rubbing of that unused opaque mirror hanging inside a man of action
+had helped him piecemeal to perceive bits of his conduct, entirely
+approved by him, which were intimately connected, nevertheless, with a
+train of circumstances that he disliked and could not charge justly upon
+any other shoulders than his own.  What was to be thought of it?  He
+would not be undergoing this botheration of the prolonged attempt to
+bring a stubborn woman to a sense of her duty, if he had declared his
+marriage in the ordinary style, and given his young countess her
+legitimate place before the world.  What impeded it?  The shameful
+ingratitude of his countrymen to the soldier who did it eminent service
+at a crisis of the destinies of our Indian Empire!  He could not condone
+the injury done to him by entering among them again.  Too like the kicked
+cur, that!  He retired--call it 'sulked in his tent,' if you like.  His
+wife had to share his fortunes.  He being slighted, she necessarily was
+shadowed.  For a while she bore it contentedly enough; then began her
+mousy scratches to get into the room off the wainscot, without blame from
+him; she behaved according to her female nature.
+
+Yes, but the battles with Charlotte forced on his recognition once more,
+and violently, the singular consequences of his retirement and Coriolanus
+quarrel with his countrymen.  He had doomed himself ever since to a
+contest with women.  First it was his Queen of Amazons, who, if
+vanquished, was not so easily vanquished, and, in fact, doubtfully,
+--for now, to propitiate her, he had challenged, and must overcome or be
+disgraced, the toughest Amazonian warrior man could stand against at cast
+of dart or lock of arms.  No day scored an advantage; and she did not
+apparently suffer fatigue.  He did: that is to say, he was worried and
+hurried to have the wrangle settled and Charlotte at Aminta's feet.  He
+gained not an inch of ground.  His principle in a contention of the sort
+was to leave the woman to the practice of her obvious artifices, and
+himself simply hammer, incessantly hammer.  But Charlotte hammered as
+well.  The modest position of the defensive negative was not to her
+taste.  The moment he presented himself she flew out upon some
+yesterday's part of the argument and carried the war across the borders,
+in attacks on his character and qualities--his weakness regarding women,
+his incapacity to forgive, and the rest.  She hammered on that head.  As
+for any prospect of a termination of the strife, he could see none in her
+joyful welcome to him and regretful parting and pleased appointment of
+the next meeting day after day.
+
+The absurdest of her devices for winding him off his aim was to harp on
+some new word she had got hold of as, for example, to point out to him
+his aptitudes, compliment him on his aptitudes, recommend him to study
+and learn the limitations of his aptitudes!  She revelled in something
+the word unfolded to her.
+
+However, here was the point: she had to be beaten.  So, if she, too,
+persisted in hammering, he must employ her female weapon of artifice with
+her.  One would gladly avoid the stooping to it in a civil dispute, in
+which one is not so gloriously absolved for lying and entrapping as in
+splendid war.
+
+Weyburn's name was announced to him at an early hour on Thursday morning.
+My lord nodded to the footman; he nodded to himself over a suggestion
+started in a tactical intelligence by the name.
+
+'Ah!  you 're off?' he accosted the young man.
+
+'I have come to take my leave, my lord.'
+
+'Nothing new in the morning papers?'
+
+'A report that Captain May intends to return and surrender.'
+
+'Not before a month has passed, if he follows my counsel.'
+
+'To defend his character.'
+
+'He has none.'
+
+'His reputation.'
+
+'He has too much.'
+
+'These charges against him must be intolerable.'
+
+'Was he not a bit of a pupil of yours?'
+
+'We practised two or three times-nothing more.'
+
+'Morsfield was a wasp at a feast.  Somebody had to crush him.  I 've seen
+the kind of man twice in my life and exactly the kind of man.  If their
+law puts down duelling, he rules the kingdom!'
+
+'My lord, I should venture to say the kind of man can be a common
+annoyance because the breach of the law is countenanced.'
+
+'Bad laws are best broken.  A society that can't get a scouring now and
+then will be a dirty set.'
+
+With a bend of the head, in apology for speaking of himself, Weyburn
+said: 'I have acted on my view.  I declined a challenge from a sort of
+henchman of his.'
+
+'Oh! a poacher's lurcher?  You did right.  Fight such fellows with
+constables.  You have seen Lady Charlotte?'
+
+'I am on my way to her ladyship.'
+
+'Do me this favour.  Fourteen doors up the street of her residence, my
+physician lives.  I have to consult him at once.  Dr. Rewkes.'
+
+Weyburn bowed.  Lady Charlotte could not receive him later than half-past
+ten of the morning, he said.  'This morning she can,' said my lord.  'You
+will tell Dr. Rewkes that it is immediate.  I rather regret your going.
+I shall be in a controversy with the Horse Guards about our cavalry
+saddles.  It would be regiments of raw backs the first fortnight of a
+campaign.'
+
+The earl discoursed on saddles; and passed to high eulogy of our
+Hanoverian auxiliary troopers in the Peninsula; 'good husbands,' he named
+them quaintly, speaking of their management of their beasts.  Thence he
+diverged to Frederic's cavalry, rarely matched for shrewdness and
+endurance; to the deeds of the Liechtenstein Hussars; to the great
+things Blucher did with his horsemen.
+
+The subject was interesting; but Weyburn saw the clock at past the half
+after ten.  He gave a slight sign of restiveness, and was allowed to go
+when the earl had finished his pro and con upon Arab horses and Mameluke
+saddles.  Lord Ormont nicked his head, just as at their first interview:
+he was known to have an objection to the English shaking of hands.
+'Good-morning,' he said; adding a remark or two, of which et cetera may
+stand for an explicit rendering.  It concerned the young man's
+prosperity: my lord's conservative plain sense was in doubt of the
+prospering of a giddy pate, however good a worker.  His last look at the
+young man, who had not served him badly, held an anticipation of possibly
+some day seeing a tatterdemalion of shipwreck, a rueful exhibition of
+ideas put to the business of life.
+
+Weyburn left the message with Dr. Rewkes in person.  It had not seemed
+to him that Lord Ormont was one requiring the immediate attendance of a
+physician.  By way of accounting to Lady Charlotte for the lateness of
+his call, he mentioned the summons he had delivered.
+
+'Oh, that's why he hasn't come yet,' said she.  'We'll sit and talk till
+he does come.  I don't wonder if his bile has been stirred.  He can't oil
+me to credit what he pumps into others.  His Lady Ormont!  I believe in
+it less than ever I did.  Morsfield or no Morsfield--and now the poor
+wretch has got himself pinned to the plank, like my grandson Bobby's
+dragonflies, I don't want to say anything further of him--she doesn't
+have much of a welcome at Steignton!  If I were a woman to wager as men
+do, I 'd stake a thousand pounds to five on her never stepping across the
+threshold of Steignton.  All very well in London, and that place he hires
+up at Marlow.  He respects our home.  That 's how I know my brother
+Rowsley still keeps a sane man.  A fortune on it!--and so says Mr.
+Eglett.  Any reasonable person must think it.  He made a fool of some
+Hampton-Evey at Madrid, if he went through any ceremony--and that I
+doubt.  But she and old (what do they call her?) may have insisted upon
+the title, as much as they could.  He sixty; she under twenty, I'm told.
+Pagnell 's the name.  That aunt of a good-looking young woman sees a
+noble man of sixty admiring her five feet seven or so--she's tall--of
+marketable merchandise, and she doesn't need telling that at sixty he'll
+give the world to possess the girl.  But not his family honour!  He stops
+at that.  Why?  Lord Ormont 's made of pride!  He'll be kind to her,
+he'll be generous, he won't forsake her; she'll have her portion in his
+will, and by the course of things in nature, she'll outlive him and
+marry, and be happy, I hope.  Only she won't enter Steignton.  You
+remember what I say.  You 'll live when I 'm gone.  It 's the thirst of
+her life to be mistress of Steignton.  Not she!--though Lord Ormont would
+have us all open our doors to her; mine too, now he 's about it.  He sets
+his mind on his plan, and he forgets rights and dues--everything; he must
+have it as his will dictates.  That 's how he made such a capital
+soldier.  You know the cavalry leader he was.  If they'd given him a
+field in Europe!  His enemies admit that.  Twelve! and my clock's five
+minutes or more slow.  What can Rowsley be doing?'
+
+She rattled backward on the scene at Steignton, and her brother's
+handsome preservation of his dignity 'stood it like the king he is!' and
+to the Morsfield-May encounter, which had prevented another; and Mrs. May
+was rolled along in the tide, with a hint of her good reason for liking
+Lord Ormont; also the change of opinion shown by the Press as to Lord
+Ormont's grand exploit.  Referring to it, she flushed and jigged on her
+chair for a saddle beneath her.  And that glorious Indian adventure
+warmed her to the man who had celebrated it among his comrades when a boy
+at school.
+
+'You 're to teach Latin and Greek, you said.  For you 're right: we
+English can't understand the words we 're speaking, if we don't know a
+good deal of Latin and some Greek.  "Conversing in tokens, not standard
+coin," you said, I remember; and there'll be a "general rabble tongue,"
+unless we English are drilled in the languages we filched from.  Lots
+of lords and ladies want the drilling, then!  I'll send some over to you
+for Swiss air and roots of the English tongue.  Oh, and you told me you
+supported Lord Ormont on his pet argument for corps d'elite; and you
+quoted Virgil to back it.  Let me have that line again--in case of his
+condescending to write to the papers on the subject.'
+
+Weyburn repeated the half-line.
+
+'Good: I won't forget now.  And you said the French act on that because
+they follow human nature, and the English don't.  We "bully it," you
+said.  That was on our drive down to Steignton.  I hope you 'll succeed.
+You 'll be visiting England.  Call on me in London or at Olmer--only mind
+and give me warning.  I shall be glad to see you.  I 've got some ideas
+from you.  If I meet a man who helps me to read the world and men as
+they are, I 'm grateful to him; and most people are not, you 'll find.
+They want you to show them what they 'd like the world to be.  We don't
+agree about a lady.  You 're in the lists, lance in rest, all for
+chivalry.  You 're a man, and a young man.  Have you taken your leave of
+her yet?  She'll expect it, as a proper compliment.'
+
+'I propose running down to take my leave of Lady Ormont to-morrow,'
+replied Weyburn.
+
+'She is handsome?'
+
+She is very handsome.'
+
+'Beautiful, do you mean?'
+
+'Oh, my lady, it would only be a man's notion!'
+
+'Now, that 's as good an answer as could be made!  You 're sure to
+succeed.  I 'm not the woman's enemy.  But let her keep her place.  Why,
+Rowsley can't be coming to-day!  Did Lord Ormont look ill?'
+
+'It did not strike me so.'
+
+'He 's between two fires.  A man gets fretted.  But I shan't move a step.
+I dare say she won't.  Especially with that Morsfield out of the way.
+You do mean you think her a beauty.  Well, then, there'll soon be a
+successor to Morsfield.  Beauties will have their weapons, and they can
+hit on plenty; and it 's nothing to me, as long as I save my brother from
+their arts.'
+
+Weyburn felt he had done his penance in return for kindness.  He bowed
+and rose, Lady Charlotte stretched out her hand.
+
+'We shall be sending you a pupil some day,' she said, and smiled.
+
+'Forward your address as soon as you 're settled.' Her face gave a
+glimpse of its youth in a cordial farewell smile.
+
+Lord Ormont had no capacity to do the like, although they were strictly
+brother and sister in appearance.  The smallest difference in character
+rendered her complex and kept him simple.  She had a thirsting mind.
+
+Weyburn fancied that a close intimacy of a few months would have enabled
+him to lift her out of her smirching and depraving mean jealousies.  He
+speculated, as he trod the street, on little plots and surprises, which
+would bring Lady Charlotte and Lady Ormont into presence, and end by
+making friends of them.  Supposing that could be done, Lady Ormont might
+be righted by the intervention of Lady Charlotte after all.
+
+Weyburn sent his dream flying with as dreamy an after-thought: 'Funny it
+will be then for Lady Charlotte to revert to the stuff she has been
+droning in my ear half an hour ago!--Look well behind, and we see spots
+where we buzzed, lowed, bit and tore; and not until we have cast that
+look and seen the brute are we human creatures.'
+
+A crumb of reflection such as this could brace him, adding its modest
+maravedi to his prized storehouse of gain, fortifying with assurances of
+his having a concrete basis for his business in life.  His great youthful
+ambition had descended to it, but had sunk to climb on a firmer footing.
+
+Arthur Abner had his next adieu.  They talked of Lady Ormont, as to whose
+position of rightful Countess of Ormont Mr. Abner had no doubt.  He said
+of Lady Charlotte: 'She has a clear head; but she loves her "brother
+Rowsley" excessively; and any excess pushes to craziness.'
+
+He spoke to Weyburn of his prospects in the usually, perhaps necessarily,
+cheerless tone of men who recognize by contrast the one mouse's nibbling
+at a mountain of evil.  'To harmonize the nationalities, my dear boy!
+teach Christians to look fraternally on Jews!  David was a harper, but
+the setting of him down to roll off a fugue on one of your cathedral
+organs would not impose a heavier task than you are undertaking.  You
+have my best wishes, whatever aid I can supply.  But we 're nearer to
+King John's time than to your ideal, as far as the Jews go.'
+
+'Not in England.'
+
+'Less in England,' Abner shrugged.
+
+'You have beaten the Christians on the field they challenged you to enter
+for a try.  They feel the pinch in their interests and their vanity.
+That will pass.  I 'm for the two sides, under the name of Justice;
+and I give the palm to whichever of the two first gets hold of the idea
+of Justice.  My old schoolmate's well?'
+
+'Always asking after Matey Weyburn !'
+
+'He shall have my address in Switzerland.  You and I will be
+corresponding.'
+
+Now rose to view the visit to the lady who was Lady Ormont on the tongue,
+Aminta at heart; never to be named Aminta even to himself.  His heart
+broke loose at a thought of it.
+
+He might say Browny.  For that was not serious with the intense present
+signification the name Aminta had.  Browny was queen of the old school-
+time-enclosed it in her name; and that sphere enclosed her, not excluding
+him.  And the dear name of Browny played gently, humorously, fervently,
+too, with life: not, pathetically, as that of Aminta did when came a
+whisper of her situation, her isolation, her friendlessness; hardly
+dissimilar to what could be imagined of a gazelle in the streets of
+London city.  The Morsfields were not all slain.  The Weyburns would be
+absent.
+
+At the gate of his cottage garden Weyburn beheld a short unfamiliar
+figure of a man with dimly remembered features.  Little Collett he still
+was in height.  The schoolmates had not met since the old days of
+Cuper's.
+
+Little Collett delivered a message of invitation from Selina, begging Mr.
+Weyburn to accompany her brother on the coach to Harwich next day, and
+spend two or three days by the sea.  But Weyburn's mind had been set in
+the opposite direction--up Thames instead of down.
+
+He was about to refuse, but he checked his voice and hummed.  Words of
+Selina's letter jumped in italics.  He perceived Lady Ormont's hand.
+For one thing, would she be at Great Marlow alone?  And he knew that hand
+--how deftly it moved and moved others.  Selina Collett would not have
+invited him with underlinings merely to see a shoreside house and garden.
+Her silence regarding a particular name showed her to be under
+injunction, one might guess.  At worst, it would be the loss of a couple
+of days; worth the venture.  They agreed to journey by coach next day.
+
+Facing eastward in the morning, on a seat behind the coachman, Weyburn
+had a seafaring man beside him, bound for the good port of Harwich, where
+his family lived, and thence by his own boat to Flushing.  Weyburn set
+him talking of himself, as the best way of making him happy; for it is
+the theme which pricks to speech, and so liberates an uncomfortably
+locked-up stranger; who, if sympathetic to human proximity, is thankful.
+They exchanged names, delighted to find they were both Matthews;
+whereupon Matthew of the sea demanded the paw of Matthew of the land, and
+there was a squeeze.  The same with little Collett, after hearing of him
+as the old schoolmate of the established new friend.  Then there was
+talk.  Little Collett named Felixstowe as the village of his mother's
+house and garden sloping to the sands.  'That 's it-you have it,' said
+the salted Matthew: 'peace is in that spot, and there I 've sworn to
+pitch my tent when I 'm incapacitated for further exercise--profitable,
+so to speak.  My eldest girl has a bar of amber she picked up one wash of
+the tide at Felixstowe, and there it had been lying sparkling, unseen,
+hours, the shore is that solitary.  What I like!--a quiet shore and a
+peopled sea.  Ever been to Brighton?  There it 's t' other way.'
+
+Not long after he had mentioned the time of early evening for their entry
+into his port of Harwich, the coach turned quietly over on a bank of the
+roadside, depositing outside passengers quite safely, in so matter-of-
+course a way, that only the screams of an uninjured lady inside repressed
+their roars of laughter.  One of the wheels had come loose, half a mile
+off the nearest town.  Their entry into Harwich was thereby delayed until
+half-past nine at night.  Full of consideration for the new mates now
+fast wedded to his heart by an accident.  Matthew Shale proposed to
+Matthew Weyburn, instead of the bother of crossing the ferry with a
+portmanteau and a bag at that late hour, to sup at his house, try the
+neighbouring inn for a short sleep, and ship on board his yawl, the
+honest Susan, to be rowed ashore off the Swin to Felixstowe sands no
+later than six o'clock of a summer's morning, in time for a bath and a
+swim before breakfast.  It sounded well--it sounded sweetly.  Weyburn
+suggested the counter proposal of supper for the three at the inn.  But
+the other Matthew said: 'I married a cook.  She expects a big appetite,
+and she always keeps warm when I 'm held away, no matter how late.  Sure
+to be enough.'
+
+Beds were secured at the inn; after which came the introduction to Mrs.
+Shale, the exhibition of Susan Shale's bar of amber, the dish of fresh-
+fried whiting, the steak pudding, a grog, tobacco, rest at the inn, and
+a rousing bang at the sleepers' doors when the unwonted supper in them
+withheld an answer to the intimating knock.  Young Matthew Shale, who had
+slept on board the Susan, conducted them to her boat.  His glance was
+much drawn to the very white duck trousers Weyburn had put on, for a
+souvenir of the approbation they had won at Marlow.  They were on, and so
+it was of no use for young Matthew to say they were likely to bear away a
+token from the Susan.  She was one among the damsels of colour, and free
+of her tokens, especially to the spotless.
+
+How it occurred, nobody saw; though everybody saw how naturally it must
+occur for the white ducks to 'have it in the eye' by the time they had
+been on board a quarter of an hour.  Weyburn got some fun out of them,
+for a counterbalance to a twitch of sentimental regret scarcely
+decipherable, as that the last view of him should bear a likeness of
+Browny's recollection of her first.
+
+A glorious morning of flushed open sky and sun on sea chased all small
+thoughts out of it.  The breeze was from the west, and the Susan, lightly
+laden, took the heave of smooth rollers with a flowing current-curtsey in
+the motion of her speed.  Fore-sail and aft were at their gentle strain;
+her shadow rippled fragmentarily along to the silver rivulet and boat of
+her wake.  Straight she flew to the ball of fire now at spring above the
+waters, and raining red gold on the line of her bows.  By comparison she
+was an ugly yawl, and as the creature of wind and wave beautiful.
+
+They passed an English defensive fort, and spared its walls, in obedience
+to Matthew Shale's good counsel that they should forbear from sneezing.
+Little Collett pointed to the roof of his mother's house twenty paces
+rearward of a belt of tamarisks, green amid the hollowed yellows of
+shorebanks yet in shade, crumbling to the sands.  Weyburn was attracted
+by a diminutive white tent, of sentry-box shape, evidently a bather's,
+quite as evidently a fair bather's.  He would have to walk on some way
+for his dip.  He remarked to little Collett that ladies going into the
+water half-dressed never have more than half a bath.  His arms and legs
+flung out contempt of that style of bathing, exactly in old Matey's well-
+remembered way.  Half a mile off shore, the Susan was put about to flap
+her sails, and her boat rocked with the passengers.  Turning from a final
+cheer to friendly Matthew, Weyburn at the rudder espied one of those
+unenfranchised ladies in marine uniform issuing through the tent-slit.
+She stepped firmly, as into her element.  A plain look at her, and a
+curious look, and an intent look fixed her fast, and ran the shock on his
+heart before he knew of a guess.  She waded, she dipped; a head across
+the breast of the waters was observed: this one of them could swim.  She
+was making for sea, a stone's throw off the direction of the boat.
+Before his wits had grasped the certainty possessing them, fiery envy and
+desire to be alongside her set his fingers fretting at buttons.  A grand
+smooth swell of the waters lifted her, and her head rose to see her
+world.  She sank down the valley, where another wave was mounding for its
+onward roll: a gentle scene of Weyburn's favourite Sophoclean chorus.
+Now she was given to him--it was she.  How could it ever have been any
+other!  He handed his watch to little Collett, and gave him the ropes,
+pitched coat and waistcoat on his knees, stood free of boots and socks,
+and singing out, truly enough, the words of a popular cry, 'White ducks
+want washing,' went over and in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+A MARINE DUET
+
+She soon had to know she was chased.  She had seen the dive from the
+boat, and received all illumination.  With a chuckle of delighted
+surprise, like a blackbird startled, she pushed seaward for joy of the
+effort, thinking she could exult in imagination of an escape up to the
+moment of capture, yielding then only to his greater will; and she meant
+to try it.
+
+The swim was a holiday; all was new--nothing came to her as the same old
+thing since she took her plunge; she had a sea-mind--had left her earth-
+mind ashore.  The swim, and Matey Weyburn pursuing her passed up, out of
+happiness, through the spheres of delirium, into the region where our
+life is as we would have it be a home holding the quiet of the heavens,
+if but midway thither, and a home of delicious animation of the whole
+frame, equal to wings.
+
+He drew on her, but he was distant, and she waved an arm.  The shout of
+her glee sprang from her: 'Matey!' He waved; she heard his voice.  Was it
+her name?  He was not so drunken of the sea as she: he had not leapt out
+of bondage into buoyant waters, into a youth without a blot, without an
+aim, satisfied in tasting; the dream of the long felicity.
+
+A thought brushed by her: How if he were absent?  It relaxed her stroke
+of arms and legs.  He had doubled the salt sea's rapture, and he had
+shackled its gift of freedom.  She turned to float, gathering her knees
+for the funny sullen kick, until she heard him near.  At once her stroke
+was renewed vigorously; she had the foot of her pursuer, and she called,
+'Adieu, Matey Weyburn!'
+
+Her bravado deserved a swifter humiliation than he was able to bring down
+on her: she swam bravely, and she was divine to see ahead as well as
+overtake.
+
+Darting to the close parallel, he said: 'What sea nymph sang me my name?'
+
+She smote a pang of her ecstasy into him: 'Ask mine!'
+
+'Browny!'
+
+They swam; neither of them panted; their heads were water-flowers that
+spoke at ease.
+
+'We 've run from school; we won't go back.'
+
+'We 've a kingdom.'
+
+'Here's a big wave going to be a wall.'
+
+'Off he rolls.'
+
+'He's like the High Brent broad meadow under Elling Wood.'
+
+'Don't let Miss Vincent hear you.'
+
+'They 're not waves; they 're sighs of the deep.'
+
+'A poet I swim with!  He fell into the deep in his first of May morning
+ducks.  We used to expect him.'
+
+'I never expected to owe them so much.'
+
+Pride of the swimmer and the energy of her joy embraced Aminta, that she
+might nerve all her powers to gain the half-minute for speaking at her
+ease.
+
+'Who 'd have thought of a morning like this?  You were looked for last
+night.'
+
+'A lucky accident to our coach.  I made friends with the skipper of the
+yawl.'
+
+'I saw the boat.  Who could have dreamed----?  Anything may happen now.'
+
+For nothing further would astonish her, as he rightly understood her; but
+he said: 'You 're prepared for the rites?  Old Triton is ready.'
+
+'Float, and tell me.'
+
+They spun about to lie on their backs.  Her right hand, at piano-work of
+the octave-shake, was touched and taken, and she did not pull it away.
+Her eyelids fell.
+
+'Old Triton waits.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'We 're going to him.'
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'Customs of the sea.'
+
+'Tell me.'
+
+'He joins hands.  We say, "Browny-Matey," and it 's done.'
+
+She splashed, crying 'Swim,' and after two strokes, 'You want to beat me,
+Matey Weyburn.'
+
+'How?'
+
+'Not fair!'
+
+'Say what.'
+
+'Take my breath.  But, yes! we'll be happy in our own way.  We 're sea-
+birds.  We 've said adieu to land.  Not to one another.  We shall be
+friends?'
+
+'Always.'
+
+'This is going to last?'
+
+'Ever so long.'
+
+They had a spell of steady swimming, companionship to inspirit it.
+Browny was allowed place a little foremost, and she guessed not
+wherefore, in her flattered emulation.
+
+'I 'm bound for France.'
+
+'Slew a point to the right: South-east by South.  We shall hit
+Dunkerque.'
+
+'I don't mean to be picked up by boats.'
+
+'We'll decline.'
+
+'You see I can swim.'
+
+'I was sure of it.'
+
+They stopped their talk--for the pleasure of the body to be savoured in
+the mind, they thought; and so took Nature's counsel to rest their voices
+awhile.
+
+Considering that she had not been used of late to long immersions, and
+had not broken her fast, and had talked much, for a sea-nymph, Weyburn
+spied behind him on a shore seeming flat down, far removed.
+
+'France next time,' he said: 'we'll face to the rear.'
+
+'Now?' said she, big with blissful conceit of her powers and incredulous
+of such a command from him.
+
+'You may be feeling tired presently.'
+
+The musical sincerity of her 'Oh no, not I!' sped through his limbs; he
+had a willingness to go onward still some way.
+
+But his words fastened the heavy land on her spirit, knocked at the habit
+of obedience.  Her stroke of the arms paused.  She inclined to his
+example, and he set it shoreward.
+
+They swam silently, high, low, creatures of the smooth green roller.  He
+heard the water-song of her swimming.  She, though breathing equably at
+the nostrils, lay deep.  The water shocked at her chin, and curled round
+the under lip.  He had a faint anxiety; and, not so sensible of a weight
+in the sight of land as she was, he chattered, by snatches, rallied her,
+encouraged her to continue sportive for this once, letting her feel it
+was but a once and had its respected limit with him.  So it was not out
+of the world.
+
+Ah, friend Matey!  And that was right and good on land; but rightness and
+goodness flung earth's shadow across her brilliancy here, and any stress
+on 'this once' withdrew her liberty to revel in it, putting an end to
+perfect holiday; and silence, too, might hint at fatigue.  She began to
+think her muteness lost her the bloom of the enchantment, robbing her of
+her heavenly frolic lead, since friend Matey resolved to be as eminently
+good in salt water as on land.  Was he unaware that they were boy and
+girl again?--she washed pure of the intervening years, new born, by
+blessing of the sea; worthy of him here!--that is, a swimmer worthy of
+him, his comrade in salt water.
+
+'You're satisfied I swim well?' she said.
+
+'It would go hard with me if we raced a long race.'
+
+'I really was out for France.'
+
+'I was ordered to keep you for England.' She gave him Browny's eyes.
+
+'We've turned our backs on Triton.'
+
+'The ceremony was performed.'
+
+'When?'
+
+'The minute I spoke of it and you splashed.'
+
+'Matey!  Matey Weyburn!'
+
+'Browny Farrell!'
+
+'Oh, Matey!  she's gone!'
+
+'She's here.'
+
+'Try to beguile me, then, that our holiday's not over.  You won't forget
+this hour?'
+
+'No time of mine on earth will live so brightly for me.'
+
+'I have never had one like it.  I could go under and be happy; go to old
+Triton, and wait for you; teach him to speak your proper Christian name.
+He hasn't heard it yet,--heard "Matey,"--never yet has been taught
+"Matthew."'
+
+'Aminta!'
+
+'Oh, my friend! my dear!' she cried, in the voice of the wounded, like a
+welling of her blood: 'my strength will leave me.  I may play--not you:
+you play with a weak vessel.  Swim, and be quiet.  How far do you count
+it?'
+
+'Under a quarter of a mile.'
+
+'Don't imagine me tired.'
+
+'If you are, hold on to me.'
+
+'Matey, I'm for a dive.'
+
+He went after the ball of silver and bubbles, and they came up together.
+There is no history of events below the surface.
+
+She shook off her briny blindness, and settled to the full sweep of the
+arms, quite silent now.  Some emotion, or exhaustion from the strain of
+the swimmer's breath in speech, stopped her playfulness.  The pleasure
+she still knew was a recollection of the outward swim, when she had been
+privileged to cast away sex with the push from earth, as few men will
+believe that women, beautiful women, ever wish to do; and often and
+ardently during the run ahead they yearn for Nature to grant them their
+one short holiday truce.
+
+But Aminta forgave him for bringing earth so close to her when there was
+yet a space of salt water between her and shore; and she smiled at times,
+that he might not think she was looking grave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE PLIGHTING
+
+They touched sand at the first draw of the ebb, and this being earth,
+Matey addressed himself to the guardian and absolving genii of matter-of-
+fact, by saying; 'Did you inquire about the tides?'
+
+Her head shook, stunned with what had passed.  She waded to shore,
+after motioning for him to swim on.  Men, in comparison beside their fair
+fellows, are so little sensationally complex, that his one feeling now,
+as to what had passed, was relief at the idea of his presence having been
+a warrantable protectorship.
+
+Aminta's return from the sea-nymph to the state of woman crossed
+annihiliation on the way back to sentience, and picked up meaningless
+pebbles and shells of life, between the sea's verge and her tent's
+shelter; hardly her own life to her understanding yet, except for the
+hammer Memory became, to strike her insensible, at here and there a
+recollected word or nakedness of her soul.
+
+He swam along by the shore to where the boat was paddled, spying at her
+bare feet on the sand, her woman's form.  He waved, and the figure in the
+striped tunic and trousers waved her response, apparently the same person
+he had quitted.
+
+Dry and clad, and decently formal under the transformation, they met at
+Mrs. Collett's breakfast-table, and in each hung the doubt whether land
+was the dream or sea.  Both owned to a swim; both omitted mention of the
+tale of white ducks.  Little Collett had brought Matey's and his
+portmanteau into the house, by favour of the cook, through the scullery.
+He, who could have been a pictorial and suggestive narrator, carried a
+spinning head off his shoulders from this wonderful Countess of Ormont to
+Matey Weyburn's dark-eyed Browny at High Brent, and the Sunday walk in
+Sir Peter Wensell's park.  Away and back his head went.  Browny was not
+to be thought of as Browny; she was this grand Countess of Ormont; she
+had married Matey Weyburn's hero: she would never admit she had been
+Browny.  Only she was handsome then, and she is handsome now; and she
+looks on Matey Weyburn now just as she did then.  How strange is the
+world!  Or how if we are the particular person destined to encounter the
+strange things of the world?  And fancy J. Masner, and Pinnett major, and
+young Oakes (liked nothing better than a pretty girl, he strutted
+boasting at thirteen), and the Frenchy, and the lot, all popping down at
+the table, and asked the name of the lady sitting like Queen Esther--how
+they would roar out!  Boys, of course--but men, too!--very few men have a
+notion of the extraordinary complications and coincidences and cracker-
+surprises life contains.  Here 's an instance; Matey Weyburn positively
+will wear white ducks to play before Aminta Farrell on the first of May
+cricketing-day.  He happens to have his white ducks on when he sees the
+Countess of Ormont swimming in the sea; and so he can go in just as if
+they were all-right bathing-drawers.  In he goes, has a good long swim
+with her, and when he comes out, says, of his dripping ducks, 'tabula
+votiva .  .  .  avida vestimenta,' to remind an old schoolmate of his
+hopping to the booth at the end of a showery May day, and dedicating them
+to the laundry in these words.  It seems marvellous.  It was a quaint
+revival, an hour after breakfast, for little Collett to be acting as
+intermediary with Selina to request Lady Ormont's grant of a five-
+minutes' interview before the church-bell summoned her.  She was writing
+letters, and sent the message: 'Tell Mr. Weyburn I obey.' Selina
+delivered it, uttering 'obey' in a demurely comical way, as a word of
+which the humour might be comprehensible to him.
+
+Aminta stood at the drawing-room window.  She was asking herself whether
+her recent conduct shrieked coquette to him, or any of the abominable
+titles showered on the women who take free breath of air one day after
+long imprisonment.
+
+She said: 'Does it mean you are leaving us?' the moment he was near.
+
+'Not till evening or to-morrow, as it may happen,' he answered: 'I have
+one or two things to say, if you will spare the time.'
+
+'All my time,' said she, smiling to make less of the heart's reply; and
+he stepped into the room.
+
+They had not long back been Matey and Browny, and though that was in
+another element, it would not sanction the Lady Ormont and Mr. Weyburn
+now.  As little could it be Aminta and Matthew.  Brother and sister they
+were in the spirit's world, but in this world the titles had a sound of
+imposture.  And with a great longing to call her by some allying name, he
+rejected 'friend' for its insufficiency and commonness, notwithstanding
+the entirely friendly nature of the burden to be spoken.  Friend, was a
+title that ran on quicksands: an excuse that tried for an excuse.  He
+distinguished in himself simultaneously, that the hesitation and beating
+about for a name had its origin in an imperfect frankness when he sent
+his message: the fretful desire to be with her, close to her, hearing
+her, seeing her, besides the true wish to serve her.  He sent it after
+swinging round abruptly from an outlook over the bordering garden
+tamarisks on a sea now featureless, desolately empty.
+
+However, perceptibly silence was doing the work of a scourge, and he
+said: 'I have been thinking I may have--and I don't mind fighting hard to
+try it before I leave England on Tuesday or Wednesday--some influence
+with Lady Charlotte Eglett.  She is really one of the true women living,
+and the heartiest of backers, if she can be taught to see her course.
+I fancy I can do that.  She 's narrow, but she is not one of the class
+who look on the working world below them as, we'll say, the scavenger
+dogs on the plains of Ilium were seen by the Achaeans.  And my failure
+would be no loss to you!  Your name shall not be alluded to as empowering
+me to plead for her help.  But I want your consent, or I may be haunted
+and weakened by the idea of playing the busy-body.  One has to feel
+strong in a delicate position.  Well, you know what my position with her
+has been--one among the humble; and she has taken contradictions,
+accepted views from me, shown me she has warmth of heart to an extreme
+degree.'
+
+Aminta slightly raised her hand.  'I will save you trouble.  I have
+written to Lord Ormont.  I have left him.'
+
+Their eyes engaged on the thunder of this.  'The letter has gone?'
+
+'It was posted before my swim: posted yesterday.'
+
+'You have fully and clearly thought it out to a determination?'
+
+'Bit by bit--I might say, blow by blow.'
+
+'It is no small matter to break a marriage-tie.'
+
+'I have conversed with your mother.'
+
+'Yes, she!  and the woman happiest in marriage!'
+
+'I know.  It was hatred of injustice, noble sympathy.  And she took me
+for one of the blest among wives.'
+
+'She loved God.  She saw the difference between men's decrees for their
+convenience, and God's laws.  She felt for women.  You have had a hard
+trial Aminta.'
+
+'Oh, my name!  You mean it?'
+
+'You heard it from me this morning.'
+
+'Yes, there!  I try to forget.  I lost my senses.  You may judge me
+harshly, on reflection.'
+
+'Judge myself worse, then.  You had a thousand excuses.  I had only my
+love of you.  There's no judgement against either of us, for us to see,
+if I read rightly.  We elect to be tried in the courts of the sea-god.
+Now we 'll sit and talk it over.  The next ten minutes will decide our
+destinies.'
+
+His eyes glittered, otherwise he showed the coolness of the man
+discussing business; and his blunt soberness refreshed and upheld her, as
+a wild burst of passion would not have done.
+
+Side by side, partly facing, they began their interchange.
+
+'You have weighed what you abandon?'
+
+'It weighs little.'
+
+'That may be error.  You have to think into the future.'
+
+'My sufferings and experiences are not bad guides.'
+
+'They count.  How can you be sure you have all the estimates?'
+
+'Was I ever a wife?'
+
+'You were and are the Countess of Ormont.'
+
+'Not to the world.  An unacknowledged wife is a slave, surely.'
+
+'You step down, if you take the step.'
+
+'From what?  Once I did desire that station--had an idea it was glorious.
+I despise it: or rather the woman who had the desire.'
+
+'But the step down is into the working world.'
+
+'I have means to live humbly.  I want no more, except to be taught to
+work.'
+
+'So says the minute.  Years are before you.  You have weighed well, that
+you attract?'
+
+She reddened and murmured: 'How small!' Her pout of spite at her
+attractions was little simulated.
+
+'Beauty and charm are not small matters.  You have the gift, called
+fatal.  Then--looking right forward--you have faith in the power of
+resistance of the woman living alone?'
+
+He had struck at her breast.  From her breast she replied.
+
+'Hear this of me.  I was persecuted with letters.  I read them and did
+not destroy them.  Perhaps you saved me.  Looking back, I see weakness,
+nothing worse; but it is a confession.'
+
+'Yes, you have courage.  And that comes of a great heart.  And therein
+lies the danger.'
+
+'Advise me of what is possible to a lonely woman.'
+
+'You have resolved on the loneliness?'
+
+'It means breathing to me.'
+
+'You are able to see that Lord Ormont is a gentleman?'
+
+'A chivalrous gentleman, up to the bounds of his intelligence.'
+
+The bounds of his intelligence closed their four walls in a rapid
+narrowing slide on Aminta's mind, and she exclaimed:
+
+'If only to pluck flowers in fields and know their names, I must be free!
+I say what one can laugh at, and you are good and don't.  Is the
+interrogatory exhausted?'
+
+'Aminta, my beloved, if you are free, I claim you.'
+
+'Have you thought--?'
+
+The sense of a dissolving to a fountain quivered through her veins.
+
+'Turn the tables and examine me.'
+
+'But have you thought--oh!  I am not the girl you loved.  I would go
+through death to feel I was, and give you one worthy of you.'
+
+'That means what I won't ask you to speak at present but I must have
+proof.'
+
+He held out a hand, and hers was laid in his.
+
+There was more for her to say, she knew.  It came and fled, lightened and
+darkened.  She had yielded her hand to him here on land, not with the
+licence and protection of the great holiday salt water; and she was
+trembling from the run of his blood through hers at the pressure of
+hands, when she said in undertones: 'Could we--we might be friends.'
+
+'Meet and part as friends, you and I,' he replied.
+
+His voice carried the answer for her, his intimate look had in it the
+unfolding of the full flower of the woman to him, as she could not
+conceal from such eyes; and feeling that, she was all avowal.
+
+'It is for life, Matthew.'
+
+'My own words to myself when I first thought of the chance.'
+
+'But the school?'
+
+'I shall not consider that we are malefactors.  We have the world against
+us.  It will not keep us from trying to serve it.  And there are hints of
+humaner opinions; it's not all a huge rolling block of a Juggernaut.  Our
+case could be pleaded before it.  I don't think the just would condemn us
+heavily.  I shall have to ask you to strengthen me, complete me.  If you
+love me, it is your leap out of prison, and without you, I am from this
+time no better than one-third of a man.  I trust you to weigh the
+position you lose, and the place we choose to take in the world.  It 's
+this--I think this describes it.  You know the man who builds his house
+below the sea's level has a sleepless enemy always threatening.  His
+house must be firm and he must look to the dykes.  We commit this
+indiscretion.  With a world against us, our love and labour are
+constantly on trial; we must have great hearts, and if the world is
+hostile we are not to blame it.  In the nature of things it could not be
+otherwise.  My own soul, we have to see that we do--though not publicly,
+not insolently, offend good citizenship.  But we believe--I with my whole
+faith, and I may say it of you--that we are not offending Divine law.
+You are the woman I can help and join with; think whether you can tell
+yourself that I am the man.  So, then, our union gives us powers to make
+amends to the world, if the world should grant us a term of peace for the
+effort.  That is our risk; consider it, Aminta, between now and tomorrow;
+deliberate.  We don't go together into a garden of roses.'
+
+'I know.  I should feel shame.  I wish it to look dark,' said Aminta, her
+hand in his, and yet with a fair-sailing mind on the stream of the blood.
+
+Rationally and irrationally, the mixed passion and reason in two clear
+heads and urgent hearts discussed the stand they made before a world
+defied, neither of them quite perceiving what it was which coloured
+reason to beauty, or what so convinced their intellects when passion
+spoke the louder.
+
+'I am to have a mate.'
+
+'She will pray she may be one.'
+
+'She is my first love.'
+
+Aminta's lips formed 'mine,' without utterance.
+
+Meanwhile his hand or a wizardry subdued her will, allured her body.  She
+felt herself being drawn to the sign and seal of their plighting for
+life.  She said, 'Matthew,' softly in protest; and he said, 'Never once
+yet!'  She was owing to his tenderness.  Her deepened voice murmured:
+'Is this to deliberate?'  Colour flooded the beautiful dark face, as of
+the funeral hues of a sun suffusing all the heavens; firing earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+AMINTA TO HER LORD
+
+On Friday, on Saturday, on Sunday, Lady Charlotte waited for her brother
+Rowsley, until it was a diminished satisfaction that she had held her
+ground and baffled his mighty will to subdue her.  She did not sleep for
+thinking of him on the Sunday night.  Toward morning a fit of hazy
+horrors, which others would have deemed imaginings, drove her from her
+bed to sit and brood over Rowsley in a chair.  What if it was a case of
+heart with him too?  Heart disease had been in the family.  A man like
+Rowsley, still feeling the world before him, as a man of his energies and
+aptitudes, her humour added in the tide of his anxieties, had a right to
+feel, would not fall upon resignation like a woman.
+
+She was at the physician's door at eight o'clock.  Dr. Rewkes reported
+reassuringly; it was a simple disturbance in Lord Ormont's condition of
+health, and he conveyed just enough of disturbance to send the impetuous
+lady knocking and ringing at her brother's door upon the hour of nine.
+
+The announcement of Lady Charlotte's early visit informed my lord that
+Dr. Rewkes had done the spiriting required of him.  He descended to the
+library and passed under scrutiny.
+
+'You don't look ill, Rowsley,' she said, reluctantly in the sound.
+
+'I am the better for seeing you here, Charlotte.  Shall I order breakfast
+for you?  I am alone.'
+
+'I know you are.  I've eaten.  Rewkes tells me you've not lost appetite.'
+
+'Have I the appearance of a man who has lost anything?'  Prouder man, and
+heartier and ruddier, could not be seen, she thought.
+
+'You're winning the country to right you; that I know.'
+
+'I don't ask it.'
+
+'The country wants your services.'
+
+'I have heard some talk of it.  That lout comes to a knowledge of his
+wants too late.  If they promoted and offered me the command in India to-
+morrow--'My lord struck the arm of his chair.  'I live at Steignton
+henceforth; my wife is at a seaside place eastward.  She left the jewel-
+case when on her journey through London for safety; she is a particularly
+careful person, forethoughtful.  I take her down to Steignton two days
+after her return.  We entertain there in the autumn.  You come?'
+
+'I don't.  I prefer decent society.'
+
+'You are in her house now, ma'am.'
+
+'If I have to meet the person, you mean, I shall be civil.  The society
+you've given her, I won't meet.'
+
+'You will have to greet the Countess of Ormont if you care to meet your
+brother.'
+
+'Part, then, on the best terms we can.  I say this, the woman who keeps
+you from serving your country, she 's your country's enemy.'
+
+'Hear my answer.  The lady who is my wife has had to suffer for what you
+call my country's treatment of me.  It 's a choice between my country and
+her.  I give her the rest of my time.'
+
+'That's dotage.'
+
+'Fire away your epithets.'
+
+'Sheer dotage.  I don't deny she's a handsome young woman.'
+
+'You'll have to admit that Lady Ormont takes her place in our family with
+the best we can name.'
+
+'You insult my ears, Rowsley.'
+
+'The world will say it when it has the honour of her acquaintance.'
+
+'An honour suspiciously deferred.'
+
+'That's between the world and me.'
+
+'Set your head to work, you'll screw the world to any pitch you like--
+that I don't need telling.'
+
+Lord Ormont's head approved the remark.
+
+'Now,' said Lady Charlotte, 'you won't get the Danmores, the Dukerlys,
+the Carminters, the Oxbridges any more than you get me.'
+
+'You are wrong, ma'am.  I had yesterday a reply from Lady Danmore to a
+communication of mine.'
+
+'It 's thickening.  But while I stand, I stand for the family; and I 'm
+not in it, and while I stand out of it, there 's a doubt either of your
+honesty or your sanity.'
+
+'There's a perfect comprehension of my sister!'
+
+'I put my character in the scales against your conduct, and your Countess
+of Ormont's reputation into the bargain.'
+
+'You have called at her house; it 's a step.  You 'll be running at her
+heels next.  She 's not obdurate.'
+
+'When you see me running at her heels, it'll be with my head off.  Stir
+your hardest, and let it thicken.  That man Morsfield's name mixed up
+with a sham Countess of Ormont, in the stories flying abroad, can't hurt
+anybody.  A true Countess of Ormont--we 're cut to the quick.'
+
+'We 're cut!  Your quick, Charlotte, is known to court the knife.'
+
+Letters of the morning's post were brought in.
+
+The earl turned over a couple and took up a third, saying: 'I 'll attend
+to you in two minutes'; and thinking once more: Queer world it is, where,
+when you sheath the sword, you have to be at play with bodkins!
+
+Lady Charlotte gazed on the carpet, effervescent with retorts to his last
+observation, rightly conjecturing that the letter he selected to read was
+from 'his Aminta.'
+
+The letter apparently was interesting, or it was of inordinate length.
+He seemed still to be reading.  He reverted to the first page.
+
+At the sound of the paper, she discarded her cogitations and glanced up.
+His countenance had become stony.  He read on some way, with a sudden
+drop on the signature, a recommencement, a sound in the throat, as when
+men grasp a comprehensible sentence of a muddled rigmarole and begin to
+have hopes of the remainder.  But the eye on the page is not the eye
+which reads.
+
+'No bad news, Rowsley?'
+
+The earl's breath fell heavily.
+
+Lady Charlotte left her chair, and walked about the room.
+
+'Rowsley, I 'd like to hear if I can be of use.'
+
+'Ma'am?' he said; and pondered on the word 'use,' staring at her.
+
+'I don't intend to pry.  I can't see my brother look like that, and not
+ask.'
+
+The letter was tossed on the table to her.  She read these lines, dated
+from Felixstowe:
+
+     'MY DEAR LORD,
+
+     'The courage I have long been wanting in has come at last, to break
+     a tie that I have seen too clearly was a burden on you from the
+     beginning.  I will believe that I am chiefly responsible for
+     inducing you to contract it.  The alliance with an inexperienced
+     girl of inferior birth, and a perhaps immoderate ambition, has taxed
+     your generosity; and though the store may be inexhaustible, it is
+     not truly the married state when a wife subjects the husband to such
+     a trial.  The release is yours, the sadness is for me.  I have
+     latterly seen or suspected a design on your part to meet my former
+     wishes for a public recognition of the wife of Lord Ormont.  Let me
+     now say that these foolish wishes no longer exist.  I rejoice to
+     think that my staying or going will be alike unknown to the world.
+     I have the means of a livelihood, in a modest way, and shall trouble
+     no one.
+
+     'I have said, the sadness is for me.  That is truth.  But I have to
+     add, that I, too, am sensible of the release.  My confession of a
+     change of feeling to you as a wife, writes the close of all
+     relations between us.  I am among the dead for you; and it is a
+     relief to me to reflect on the little pain I give .  .  .'
+
+
+'Has she something on her conscience about that man Morsfield?' Lady
+Charlotte cried.
+
+Lord Ormont's prolonged Ah! of execration rolled her to a bundle.
+
+Nevertheless her human nature and her knowledge of woman's, would out
+with the words: 'There's a man!'
+
+She allowed her brother to be correct in repudiating the name of the dead
+Morsfield--chivalrous as he was on this Aminta's behalf to the last!--and
+struck along several heads, Adderwood's, Weyburn's, Randeller's, for the
+response to her suspicion.  A man there certainly was.  He would be
+probably a young man.  He would not necessarily be a handsome man. . . .
+or a titled or a wealthy man.  She might have set eyes on a gypsy
+somewhere round Great Marlow--blood to blood; such things have been.
+Imagining a wildish man for her, rather than a handsome one and one
+devoted staidly to the founding of a school, she overlooked Weyburn, or
+reserved him with others for subsequent speculation.
+
+The remainder of Aminta's letter referred to her delivery of the Ormont
+jewel-case at Lord Ormont's London house, under charge of her maid
+Carstairs.  The affairs of the household were stated very succinctly, the
+drawer for labelled keys, whatever pertained to her management, in London
+or at Great Marlow.
+
+'She 's cool,' Lady Charlotte said, after reading out the orderly array
+of items, in a tone of rasping irony, to convince her brother he was well
+rid of a heartless wench.
+
+Aminta's written statement of those items were stabs at the home she had
+given him, a flashed picture of his loss.  Nothing written by her touched
+him to pierce him so shrewdly; nothing could have brought him so closely
+the breathing image in the flesh of the woman now a phantom for him.
+
+'Will she be expecting you to answer, Rowsley?'
+
+'Will that forked tongue cease hissing!' he shouted, in the agony of a
+strong man convulsed both to render and conceal the terrible, shameful,
+unexampled gush of tears.
+
+Lady Charlotte beheld her bleeding giant.  She would rather have seen the
+brother of her love grimace in woman's manner than let loose those
+rolling big drops down the face of a rock.  The big sob shook him, and
+she was shaken to the dust by the sight.  Now she was advised by her deep
+affection for her brother to sit patient and dumb, behind shaded eyes:
+praising in her heart the incomparable force of the man's love of the
+woman contrasted with the puling inclinations of the woman for the man.
+
+Neither opened mouth when they separated.  She pressed and kissed a large
+nerveless hand.  Lord Ormont stood up to bow her forth.  His ruddied skin
+had gone to pallor resembling the berg of ice on the edge of Arctic seas,
+when sunlight has fallen away from it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+The peaceful little home on the solitary sandy shore was assailed,
+unwarned, beneath a quiet sky, some hours later, by a whirlwind, a dust-
+storm, and rattling volleys.  Miss Vincent's discovery, in the past
+school-days, of Selina Collett's 'wicked complicity in a clandestine
+correspondence' had memorably chastened the girl, who vowed at the time
+when her schoolmistress, using the rod of Johnsonian English for the
+purpose, exposed the depravity of her sinfulness, that she would never
+again be guilty of a like offence.  Her dear and lovely Countess of
+Ormont, for whom she then uncomplainingly suffered, who deigned now to
+call her friend, had spoken the kind good-bye, and left the house after
+Mr. Weyburn's departure that same day; she, of course, to post by Harwich
+to London; he to sail by packet from the port of Harwich for Flushing.
+The card of an unknown lady, a great lady, the Lady Charlotte Eglett, was
+handed to her mother at eight o'clock in the evening.
+
+Lady Charlotte was introduced to the innocent country couple; the mother
+knitting, the daughter studying a book of the botany of the Swiss Alps,
+dreaming a distant day's journey over historic lands of various hues to
+the unimaginable spectacle of earth's grandeur.  Her visit lasted fifteen
+minutes.  From the moment of her entry, the room was in such turmoil as
+may be seen where a water-mill wheel's paddles are suddenly set rounding
+to pour streams of foam on the smooth pool below.  A relentless catechism
+bewildered their hearing.  Mrs. Collett attempted an opposition of
+dignity to those vehement attacks for answers.  It was flooded and rolled
+over.  She was put upon her honour to reply positively to positive
+questions: whether the Countess of Ormont was in this house at present;
+whether the Countess of Ormont left the house alone or in company;
+whether a gentleman had come to the house during the stay of the Countess
+of Ormont; whether Lady Ormont had left the neighbourhood; the exact time
+of the day when she quitted the house, and the stated point of her
+destination.
+
+Ultimately, protesting that they were incapable of telling what they did
+not know--which Lady Charlotte heard with an incredulous shrug--they
+related piecemeal what they did know, and Weyburn's name gave her scent.
+She paid small heed to the tale of Mr. Weyburn's having come there in the
+character of young Mr. Collett's old schoolmate.  Mr. Weyburn had started
+for the port of Harwich.  This day, and not long subsequently, Lady
+Ormont had started for the port of Harwich, on her way to London, if we
+like to think it.  Further corroboration was quite superfluous.
+
+'Is there a night packet-boat from this port of yours?' Lady Charlotte
+asked.
+
+The household servants had to be consulted; and she, hurriedly craving
+the excuse of their tedious mistress, elicited, as far as she could
+understand them, that there might be and very nearly was, a night packet-
+boat starting for Flushing.  The cook, a native of Harwich, sent up word
+of a night packet-boat starting at about eleven o'clock last year.
+
+Lady Charlotte saw the chance as a wind-blown beacon-fire under press of
+shades.  Changeing her hawkish manner toward the simple pair, she gave
+them view of a smile magical by contrast, really beautiful--the smile she
+had in reserve for serviceable persons whom she trusted--while thanking
+them and saying, that her anxiety concerned Lady Ormont's welfare.
+
+Her brother had prophesied she would soon be 'running at his wife's
+heels,' and so she was, but not 'with her head off,' as she had rejoined.
+She might prove, by intercepting his Aminta, that her head was on.
+The windy beacon-fire of a chance blazed at the rapid rolling of her
+carriage-wheels, and sank to stifling smoke at any petty obstruction.
+Let her but come to an interview with his Aminta, she would stop all that
+nonsense of the woman's letter; carry her off--and her Weyburn plucking
+at her other hand to keep her.  Why, naturally, treated as she was by
+Rowsley, she dropped soft eyes on a good-looking secretary.  Any woman
+would--confound the young fellow!  But all 's right yet if we get to
+Harwich in time; unless .  .  .  as a certain coldfish finale tone of the
+letter playing on the old string, the irrevocable, peculiar to women who
+are novices in situations of the kind, appeared to indicate; they see in
+their conscience-blasted minds a barrier to a return home, high as the
+Archangelical gate behind Mother Eve, and they are down on their knees
+blubbering gratitude and repentance if the gate swings open to them.  It
+is just the instant, granting the catastrophe, to have a woman back to
+her duty.  She has only to learn she has a magnanimous husband.  If she
+learns into the bargain how he suffers, how he loves her,--well, she
+despises a man like that Lawrence Finchley all the more for the
+'magnanimity' she has the profit of, and perceives to be feebleness.
+But there 's woman in her good and her bad; she'll trick a man of age,
+and if he forgives her, owning his own faults in the case, she won't
+scorn him for it; the likelihood is, she 'll feel bound in honour to
+serve him faithfully for the rest of their wedded days.
+
+A sketch to her of Rowsley's deep love.  .  .  .  Lady Charlotte wandered
+into an amazement at it.  A sentence of her brother's recent speaking
+danced in her recollection.  He said of his country: That Lout comes to a
+knowledge of his wants too late.  True, Old England is always louting to
+the rear, and has to be pricked in the rear and pulled by the neck before
+she 's equal to the circumstances around her.  But what if his words were
+flung at him in turn!  Short of 'Lout,' it rang correctly.  'Too late,'
+we hope to clip from the end of the sentence likewise.  We have then, if
+you stress it--'comes to a knowledge of his wants;--a fair example of the
+creatures men are; the greatest of men; who have to learn from the loss
+of the woman--or a fear of the loss--how much they really do love her.
+
+Well, and she may learn the same or something sufficiently like it, if
+she 's caught in time, called to her face, Countess of Ormont, sister-in-
+law, and smoothed, petted, made believe she 's now understood and won't
+be questioned on a single particular--in fact, she marches back in a sort
+of triumph; and all the past in a cupboard, locked up, without further
+inquiry.
+
+Her brother Rowsley's revealed human appearance of the stricken man
+--stricken right into his big heart--precipitated Lady Charlotte's
+reflections and urged her to an unavailing fever of haste during the
+circuitous drive in moonlight to the port.  She alighted at the principal
+inn, and was there informed that the packetboat, with a favouring breeze
+and tide, had started ten minutes earlier.  She summoned the landlord,
+and described a lady, as probably one of the passengers: 'Dark, holds
+herself up high.  Some such lady had dined at the inn on tea, and gone
+aboard the boat soon after.
+
+Lady Charlotte burned with the question: Alone?  She repressed her
+feminine hunger and asked to see the book of visitors.  But the lady had
+not slept at the inn, so had not been requested to write her name.
+
+The track of the vessel could be seen from the pier, on the line of a bar
+of moonlight; and thinking, that the abominable woman, if aboard she was,
+had coolly provided herself with a continental passport--or had it done
+for two by her accomplice, that Weyburn, before she left London--Lady
+Charlotte sent a loathing gaze at the black figure of the boat on the
+water, untroubled by any reminder of her share in the conspiracy of
+events, which was to be her brother's chastisement to his end.
+
+
+Years are the teachers of the great rocky natures, whom they round and
+sap and pierce in caverns, having them on all sides, and striking deep
+inward at moments.  There is no resisting the years, if we have a heart,
+and a common understanding.  They constitute, in the sum of them, the
+self-examination, whence issues, acknowledged or not, a belated self-
+knowledge, to direct our final actions.  She had the heart.  Sight of the
+high-minded, proud, speechless man suffering for the absence of a runaway
+woman, not ceasing to suffer, never blaming the woman, and consequently,
+it could be fancied, blaming himself, broke down Lady Charlotte's
+defences and moved her to review her part in her brother Rowsley's
+unhappiness.  For supposing him to blame himself, her power to cast a
+shadow of blame on him went from her, and therewith her vindication of
+her conduct.  He lived at Olmer.  She read him by degrees, as those who
+have become absolutely tongueless have to be read; and so she gathered
+that this mortally (or lastingly) wounded brother of hers was pleased by
+an allusion to his Aminta.  He ran his finger on the lines of a map of
+Spain, from Barcelona over to Granada; and impressed his nail at a point
+appearing to be mountainous or woody.  Lady Charlotte suggested that he
+and his Aminta had passed by there.  He told a story of a carriage
+accident: added, 'She was very brave.' One day, when he had taken a
+keepsake book of England's Beauties off the drawing-room table, his eyes
+dwelt on a face awhile, and he handed it, with a nod, followed by a
+slight depreciatory shrug.  'Like her, not so handsome,' Lady Charlotte
+said.
+
+He nodded again.  She came to a knowledge of Aminta's favourite colours
+through the dwelling of his look on orange and black, deepest rose, light
+yellow, light blue.  Her grand-daughters won the satisfied look if they
+wore a combination touching his memory.  The rocky are not imaginative,
+and have to be struck from without for a kindling of them.  Submissive
+though she was to court and soothe her brother Rowsley, a spur of
+jealousy burned in the composition of her sentiments, to set her going.
+He liked visiting Mrs. Lawrence Finchley at her effaced good man's
+country seat, Brockholm in Berkshire, and would stay there a month at a
+time.  Lady Charlotte learnt why.  The enthusiast for Aminta, without
+upholding her to her late lord, whom she liked well, talked of her openly
+with him, confessed to a fondness for her.  How much Mrs. Lawrence
+ventured to say, Lady Charlotte could not know.  But rivalry pushed her
+to the extreme of making Aminta partially a topic; and so ready was he to
+follow her lead in the veriest trifles recalling the handsome runaway;
+that she had to excite his racy diatribes against the burgess English and
+the pulp they have made of a glorious nation, in order not to think him
+inclining upon dotage.
+
+Philippa's occasional scoff in fun concerning 'grandmama's tutor,' hurt
+Lady Charlotte for more reasons than one, notwithstanding the
+justification of her fore-thoughtfulness.  The girl, however, was
+privileged; she was Bobby Benlew's dearest friend, and my lord loved the
+boy; with whom nothing could be done at school, nor could a tutor at
+Olmer control him.  In fine, Bobby saddened the family and gained the
+earl's anxious affection by giving daily proofs of his being an Ormont
+in a weak frame; patently an Ormont, recurrently an invalid.  His moral
+qualities hurled him on his physical deficiencies.  The local doctor and
+Dr. Rewkes banished him twice to the seashore, where he began to bloom
+the first week and sickened the next, for want of playfellows, jolly
+fights and friendships.  Ultimately they prescribed mountain air, Swiss
+air, easy travelling to Switzerland, and several weeks of excursions at
+the foot of the Alps.  Bobby might possibly get an aged tutor, or find an
+English clergyman taking pupils, on the way.
+
+Thus it happened, that seven years after his bereavement, Lord Ormont and
+Philippa and Bobby were on the famous Bernese Terrace, grandest of
+terrestrial theatres where soul of man has fronting him earth's utmost
+majesty.  Sublime: but five minutes of it fetched sounds as of a plug in
+an empty phial from Bobby's bosom, and his heels became electrical.
+
+He was observed at play with a gentleman of Italian complexion.  Past
+guessing how it had come about, for the gentleman was an utter stranger.
+He had at any rate the tongue of an Englishman.  He had the style, too,
+the slang and cries and tricks of an English schoolboy, though visibly a
+foreigner.  And he had the art of throwing his heart into that bit of
+improvised game, or he would never have got hold of Bobby, shrewd to read
+a masker.
+
+Lugged-up by the boy to my lord and the young lady, he doffed and bowed.
+'Forgive me, pray,' he said; 'I can't see an English boy without having a
+spin with him; and I make so bold as to speak to English people wherever
+I meet them, if they give me the chance.  Bad manners?  Better than that.
+You are of the military profession, sir, I see.  I am a soldier, fresh
+from Monte Video.  Italian, it is evident, under an Italian chief there.
+A clerk on a stool, and hey presto plunged into the war a month after,
+shouldering a gun and marching.  Fifteen battles in eighteen months; and
+Death a lady at a balcony we kiss hands to on the march below.  Not a bit
+more terrible!  Ah, but your pardon, sir,' he hastened to say, observing
+rigidity on the features of the English gentleman; 'would I boast?  Not
+I.  Accept it as my preface for why I am moved to speak the English
+wherever I meet them:--Uruguay, Buenos Ayres, La Plata, or Europe.
+I cannot resist it.  At least, he bent gracefully, 'I do not.  We come
+to the grounds of my misbehaviour.  I have shown at every call I fear
+nothing, kiss hand of welcome or adieu to Death.  And I, a boy of the
+age of this youngster--he 's not like me, I can declare!--I was a sneak
+and a coward.  It follows, I was a liar and a traitor.  Who cured me of
+that vileness, that scandal?  I will tell you--an Englishman and an
+Englishwoman: my schoolmaster and his wife.  My schoolmaster--my friend!
+He is the comrade of his boys: English, French, Germans, Italians, a
+Spaniard in my time--a South American I have sent him--two from Boston,
+Massachusetts--and clever!--all emulous to excel, none boasting.  But,
+to myself; I was that mean fellow.  I did--I could let you know: before
+this young lady--she would wither me with her scorn, Enough, I sneaked,
+I lied.  I let the blame fall on a schoolfellow and a housemaid.  Oh!
+a small thing, but I coveted it--a scarf.  It reminded me of Rome.
+Enough, there at the bottom of that pit, behold me.  It was not
+discovered, but my schoolfellow was unpunished, the housemaid remained in
+service; I thought, I thought, and I thought until I could not look in my
+dear friend Matthew's face.  He said to me one day: "Have you nothing to
+tell me, Giulio?" as if to ask the road to right or left.  Out it all
+came.  And no sermon, no!  He set me the hardest task I could have.  That
+was a penance!--to go to his wife, and tell it all to her.  Then I did
+think it an easier thing to go and face death--and death had been my
+nightmare.  I went, she listened, she took my hand she said: "You will
+never do this again, I know, Giulio."  She told me no English girl would
+ever look on a man who was a coward and lied.  From that day I have made
+Truth my bride.  And what the consequence?  I know not fear!  I could
+laugh, knowing I was to lie down in my six-foot measure to-morrow.  If I
+have done my duty and look in the face of my dear Matthew and his wife!
+Ah, those two!  They are loved.  They will be loved all over Europe.  He
+works for Europe and America--all civilized people--to be one country.
+He is the comrade of his boys.  Out of school hours, it is Christian
+names all round--Matthew, Emile, Adolf, Emilio, Giulio, Robert, Marcel,
+Franz, et caetera.  Games or lessons, a boy can't help learning with him.
+He makes happy fellows and brave soldiers of them without drill.  Sir, do
+I presume when I say I have your excuse for addressing you because you
+are his countryman?  I drive to the old school in half an hour, and next
+week he and his dear wife and a good half of the boys will be on the
+tramp over the Simplon, by Lago Maggiore, to my uncle's house in Milan
+for a halt.  I go to Matthew before I see my own people.'
+
+He swept another bow of apology, chiefly to Philippa, as representative
+of the sex claiming homage.
+
+Lord Ormont had not greatly relished certain of the flowery phrases
+employed by this young foreigner.  'Truth his bride,' was damnable:
+and if a story had to be told, he liked it plain, without jerks and
+evolutions.  Many offences to our taste have to be overlooked in
+foreigners--Italians! considered, before they were proved in fire,
+a people classed by nature as operatic declaimers.  Bobby had shown
+himself on the road out to Bern a difficult boy, and stupefyingly
+ignorant.  My lord had two or three ideas working to cloudy combination
+in his head when he put a question, referring to the management of the
+dormitories at the school.  Whereupon the young Italian introduced
+himself as Giulio Calliani, and proposed a drive to inspect the old
+school, with its cricket and football fields, lake for rowing and
+swimming, gymnastic fixtures, carpenter's shed, bowling alley, and four
+European languages in the air by turns daily; and the boys, too, all the
+boys rosy and jolly, according to the last report received of them from
+his friend Matthew.  Enthusiasm struck and tightened the loose chord of
+scepticism in Lord Ormont; somewhat as if a dancing beggar had entered a
+kennel-dog's yard, designing to fascinate the faithful beast.  It is a
+chord of one note, that is tightened to sound by the violent summons to
+accept, which is a provocation to deny.  At the same time, the
+enthusiast's dance is rather funny; he is not an ordinary beggar; to see
+him trip himself in his dance would be rather funnier.  This is to say,
+inspect the trumpeted school and retire politely.  My lord knew the Bern
+of frequent visits: the woman was needed beside him to inspire a feeling
+for scenic mountains.  Philippa's admiration of them was like a new-
+pressed grape-juice after a draught of the ripe vintage.  Moreover, Bobby
+was difficult: the rejected of his English schools was a stiff Ormont at
+lessons, a wheezy Benlew in the playground: exactly the reverse of what
+should have been.  A school of four languages in bracing air, if a school
+with healthy dormitories, and a school of the trained instincts we call
+gentlemanly, might suit Master Bobby for a trial.  An eye on the boys of
+the school would see in a minute what stuff they were made of.  Supposing
+this young Italianissimo with the English tongue to be tolerably near the
+mark, with a deduction of two-thirds of the enthusiasm, Bobby might stop
+at the school as long as his health held out, or the master would keep
+him.  Supposing half a dozen things and more, the meeting with this Mr.
+Calliand was a lucky accident.  But lucky accidents are anticipated only
+by fools.
+
+Lord Ormont consented to visit the school.  He handed his card and
+invited his guest; he had a carriage in waiting for the day, he said;
+and obedient to Lady Charlotte's injunctions, he withheld Philippa from
+the party.  She and her maid were to pass the five hours of his absence
+in efforts to keep their monkey Bobby out of the well of the solicitious
+bears.
+
+My lord left his carriage at the inn of the village lying below the
+school-house on a green height.  The young enthusiast was dancing him
+into the condition of livid taciturnity, which could, if it would, flash
+out pungent epigrams of the actual world at Operatic recitative.
+
+'There's the old school-clock!  Just in time for the half-hour before
+dinner,' said Calliani, chattering two hundred to the minute, of the
+habits and usages of the school, and how all had meals together, the
+master, his wife, the teachers, the boys.  'And she--as for her!'
+Calliani kissed finger up to the furthest skies: into which a self-
+respecting sober Northener of the Isles could imagine himself to kick
+enthusiastic gesticulators, if it were polite to do so.
+
+The school-house faced the master's dwelling house, and these, with a
+block of building, formed a three-sided enclosure, like barracks!  Forth
+from the school-house door burst a dozen shouting lads, as wasps from the
+hole of their nest from a charge of powder.  Out they poured whizzing;
+and the frog he leaped, and pussy ran and doubled before the hounds, and
+hockey-sticks waved, and away went a ball.  Cracks at the ball anyhow,
+was the game for the twenty-five minutes breather before dinner.
+
+'French day!' said Calliani, hearing their cries.  Then he bellowed
+'Matthew!--Giulio !'
+
+A lusty inversion of the order of the names and an Oberland jodel
+returned his hail.  The school retreating caught up the Alpine cry
+in the distance.  Here were lungs! Here were sprites!
+
+Lord Ormont bethought him of the name of the master.  'Mr. Matthew, I
+think you said, sir,' he was observing to Calliani, as the master came
+nearer; and Calliani replied: 'His Christian name.  But if the boys are
+naughty boys, it is not the privilege.  Mr. Weyburn.'
+
+There was not any necessity to pronounce that name Calliani spoke it on
+the rush to his friend.
+
+Lord Ormont and Weyburn advanced the steps to the meeting.  Neither of
+them flinched in eye or limb.
+
+At a corridor window of the dwelling-house a lady stood.  Her colour was
+the last of a summer day over western seas; her thought: 'It has come!'
+Her mind was in her sight; her other powers were frozen.
+
+The two men conversed.  There was no gesture.
+
+This is one of the lightning moments of life for the woman, at the
+meeting of the two men between whom her person has been in dispute, may
+still be; her soul being with one.  And that one, dearer than the blood
+of her body, imperilled by her.
+
+She could ask why she exists, if a question were in her grasp.  She would
+ask for the meaning of the gift of beauty to the woman, making her
+desireable to those two men, making her a cause of strife, a thing of
+doom.  An incessant clamour dinned about her: 'It has come!'
+
+The two men walked conversing into the school-house.  She was unconscious
+of the seeing of a third, though she saw and at the back of her mind
+believed she knew a friend in him.  The two disappeared.  She was
+insensible stone, except for the bell-clang: 'It has come'; until they
+were in view again, still conversing: and the first of her thought to
+stir from petrifaction was: 'Life holds no secret.'
+
+She tried, in shame of the inanimate creature she had become,
+to force herself to think: and had, for a chastising result, a series
+of geometrical figures shooting across her brain, mystically expressive
+of the situation, not communicably.  The most vivid and persistent was a
+triangle.  Interpret who may.  The one beheld the two pass from view
+again, still conversing.
+
+They are on the gravel; they bow; they separate.  He of the grey head
+poised high has gone.
+
+Her arm was pressed by a hand.  Weyburn longed to enfold her, and she
+desired it, and her soul praised him for refraining.  Both had that
+delicacy.
+
+'You have seen, my darling,' Weyburn said.  'It has come, and we take our
+chance.  He spoke not one word, beyond the affairs of the school.  He has
+a grandnephew in want of a school: visited the dormitories, refectory,
+and sheds: tasted the well-water, addressed me as Mr. Matthew.  He had it
+from Giulio.  Came to look at the school of Giulio's "friend Matthew,":
+--you hear him.  Giulio little imagines!--Well, dear love, we stand with
+a squad in front, and wait the word.  It mayn't be spoken.  We have
+counted long before that something like it was bound to happen.  And
+you are brave.  Ruin's an empty word for us two.'
+
+'Yes, dear, it is: we will pay what is asked of us,' Aminta said.  'It
+will be heavy, if the school .  .  .  and I love our boys.  I am fit to
+be the school-housekeeper; for nothing else.'
+
+'I will go to the boys' parents.  At the worst, we can march into new
+territory.  Emile will stick to us.  Adolf, too.  The fresh flock will
+come.'
+
+Aminta cried in the voice of tears: 'I love the old so!'
+
+'The likelihood is, we shall hear nothing further.'
+
+'You had to bear the shock, Matthew.'
+
+'Whatever I bore, and you saw, you shared.'
+
+'Yes,' she said.
+
+'Mais, n'oublions pas que c'est aujourd'hui jour francais; si, madame,
+vous avez assez d'appetit pour diner avec nous?
+
+'Je suis, comme toujours, aux ordres de Monsieur.'  She was among the
+bravest of women.  She had a full ounce of lead in her breast when she
+sat with the boys at their midday meal, showing them her familiar
+pleasant face.
+
+Shortly after the hour of the evening meal, a messenger from Bern
+delivered a letter addressed to the Headmaster.  Weyburn and Aminta were
+strolling to the playground, thinking in common, as they usually did.
+They read the letter together.  These were the lines:
+
+'Lord Ormont desires to repeat his sense of obligation to Mr. Matthew for
+the inspection of the school under his charge, and will be thankful to
+Mr. Calliani, if that gentleman will do him the favour to call at his
+hotel at Bern to-morrow, at as early an hour as is convenient to him, for
+the purpose of making arrangements, agreeable to the Head-master's rules,
+for receiving his grandnephew Robert Benlew as a pupil at the school.'
+
+The two raised eyes on one another, pained in their deep joy by the
+religion of the restraint upon their hearts, to keep down the passion to
+embrace.
+
+'I thank heaven we know him to be one of the true noble men,' said
+Aminta, now breathing, and thanking Lord Ormont for the free breath
+she drew.
+
+Weyburn spoke of an idea he had gathered from the earl's manner.  But he
+had not imagined the proud lord's great-heartedness would go so far as to
+trust him with the guardianship of the boy.  That moved, and that humbled
+him, though it was far from humiliating.
+
+Six months later, the brief communication arrived from Lady Charlotte
+
+'She is a widow.
+
+'Unlikely you will hear from me again.  Death is always next door, you
+said once.  I look on the back of life.
+
+'Tell Bobby, capital for him to write he has no longing for home
+holidays.  If any one can make a man of him, you will.  That I know.
+
+                                   'CHARLOTTE EGLETT.'
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Affected misapprehensions
+Any excess pushes to craziness
+Bad laws are best broken
+Being in heart and mind the brother to the sister with women
+Bounds of his intelligence closed their four walls
+Boys, of course--but men, too!
+But had sunk to climb on a firmer footing
+Challenged him to lead up to her desired stormy scene
+Could we--we might be friends
+Death is always next door
+Desire of it destroyed it
+Detestable feminine storms enveloping men weak enough
+Distaste for all exercise once pleasurable
+Divided lovers in presence
+Enthusiasm struck and tightened the loose chord of scepticism
+Exult in imagination of an escape up to the moment of capture
+Greatest of men; who have to learn from the loss of the woman
+He gave a slight sign of restiveness, and was allowed to go
+He had gone, and the day lived again for both of them
+I look on the back of life
+I married a cook  She expects a big appetite
+I want no more, except to be taught to work
+If the world is hostile we are not to blame it
+Increase of dissatisfaction with the more she got
+Learn--principally not to be afraid of ideas
+Look well behind
+Lucky accidents are anticipated only by fools
+Magnify an offence in the ratio of our vanity
+Man who helps me to read the world and men as they are
+Meant to vanquish her with the dominating patience
+Napoleon's treatment of women is excellent example
+Necessity's offspring
+One has to feel strong in a delicate position
+Our love and labour are constantly on trial
+Perhaps inspire him, if he would let her breathe
+Person in another world beyond this world of blood
+Practical for having an addiction to the palpable
+Screams of an uninjured lady
+Selfishness  and icy inaccessibility to emotion
+She had a thirsting mind
+She had to be the hypocrite or else--leap
+Silence was doing the work of a scourge
+Smile she had in reserve for serviceable persons
+Snatch her from a possessor who forfeited by undervaluing her
+So says the minute  Years are before you
+The next ten minutes will decide our destinies
+The woman side of him
+There are women who go through life not knowing love
+There is no history of events below the surface
+They want you to show them what they 'd like the world to be
+Things are not equal
+Titles showered on the women who take free breath of air
+Violent summons to accept, which is a provocation to deny
+We don't go together into a garden of roses
+Why he enjoyed the privilege of seeing, and was not beside her
+Women are happier enslaved
+World against us  It will not keep us from trying to serve
+Years are the teachers of the great rocky natures
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA
+
+A bird that won't roast or boil or stew
+A woman, and would therefore listen to nonsense
+A free-thinker startles him as a kind of demon
+A female free-thinker is one of Satan's concubines
+Acting is not of the high class which conceals the art
+Affected misapprehensions
+Ah! we fall into their fictions
+All that Matey and Browny were forbidden to write they looked
+And not be beaten by an acknowledged defeat
+Any excess pushes to craziness
+As well ask (women) how a battle-field concerns them!
+Bad luck's not repeated every day Keep heart for the good
+Bad laws are best broken
+Began the game of Pull
+Being in heart and mind the brother to the sister with women
+Botched mendings will only make them worse
+Bounds of his intelligence closed their four walls
+Boys who can appreciate brave deeds are capable of doing them
+Boys, of course--but men, too!
+But had sunk to climb on a firmer footing
+By nature incapable of asking pardon
+Cajoled like a twenty-year-old yahoo at college
+Careful not to smell of his office
+Challenged him to lead up to her desired stormy scene
+Chose to conceive that he thought abstractedly
+Consciousness of some guilt when vowing itself innocent
+Consign discussion to silence with the cynical closure
+Convictions we store--wherewith to shape our destinies
+Convincing themselves that they impersonate sagacity
+Could not understand enthusiasm for the schoolmaster's career
+Could we--we might be friends
+Curious thing would be if curious things should fail to happen
+Death is only the other side of the ditch
+Death is always next door
+Desire of it destroyed it
+Detestable feminine storms enveloping men weak enough
+Didn't say a word  No use in talking about feelings
+Distaste for all exercise once pleasurable
+Divided lovers in presence
+Enthusiasm struck and tightened the loose chord of scepticism
+Enthusiast, when not lyrical, is perilously near to boring
+Exult in imagination of an escape up to the moment of capture
+Few men can forbear to tell a spicy story of their friends
+Greatest of men; who have to learn from the loss of the woman
+Having contracted the fatal habit of irony
+He had to shake up wrath over his grievances
+He had gone, and the day lived again for both of them
+He gave a slight sign of restiveness, and was allowed to go
+He loathed a skulker
+He took small account of the operations of the feelings
+He began ambitiously--It's the way at the beginning
+Her vehement fighting against facts
+Her duel with Time
+His aim to win the woman acknowledged no obstacle in the means
+His restored sense of possession
+Hopeless task of defending a woman from a woman
+How to compromise the matter for the sake of peace?
+I have all the luxuries--enough to loathe them
+I hate old age  It changes you so
+I could be in love with her cruelty, if only I had her near me
+I look on the back of life
+I want no more, except to be taught to work
+I married a cook  She expects a big appetite
+I'm for a rational Deity
+If the world is hostile we are not to blame it
+Ignorance roaring behind a mask of sarcasm
+Increase of dissatisfaction with the more she got
+Lawyers hold the keys of the great world
+Learn--principally not to be afraid of ideas
+Loathing of artifice to raise emotion
+Look well behind
+Lucky accidents are anticipated only by fools
+Magnify an offence in the ratio of our vanity
+Man who helps me to read the world and men as they are
+Meant to vanquish her with the dominating patience
+Men bore the blame, though the women were rightly punished
+Men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations
+Naked original ideas, are acceptable at no time
+Napoleon's treatment of women is excellent example
+Necessity's offspring
+Never nurse an injury, great or small
+Nevertheless, inclinations are an infidelity
+No love can be without jealousy
+Not daring risk of office by offending the taxpayer
+Not the indignant and the frozen, but the genially indifferent
+Not men of brains, but the men of aptitudes
+Old age is a prison wall between us and young people
+One has to feel strong in a delicate position
+One night, and her character's gone
+One is a fish to her hook; another a moth to her light
+Orderliness, from which men are privately exempt
+Our love and labour are constantly on trial
+Passion added to a bowl of reason makes a sophist's mess
+People were virtuous in past days: they counted their sinners
+Perhaps inspire him, if he would let her breathe
+Person in another world beyond this world of blood
+Policy seems to petrify their minds
+Practical for having an addiction to the palpable
+Professional Puritans
+Published Memoirs indicate the end of a man's activity
+Rage of a conceited schemer tricked
+Regularity of the grin of dentistry
+Respect one another's affectations
+Screams of an uninjured lady
+Selfishness  and icy inaccessibility to emotion
+She had to be the hypocrite or else--leap
+She had a thirsting mind
+Silence was doing the work of a scourge
+Smile she had in reserve for serviceable persons
+Snatch her from a possessor who forfeited by undervaluing her
+So says the minute  Years are before you
+That pit of one of their dead silences
+The despot is alert at every issue, to every chance
+The spending, never harvesting, world
+The shots hit us behind you
+The terrible aggregate social woman
+The next ten minutes will decide our destinies
+The woman side of him
+The good life gone lives on in the mind
+The beat of a heart with a dread like a shot in it
+There is no history of events below the surface
+There are women who go through life not knowing love
+They want you to show them what they 'd like the world to be
+Things are not equal
+Things were lumpish and gloomy that day of the week
+This female talk of the eternities
+Titles showered on the women who take free breath of air
+To males, all ideas are female until they are made facts
+To time and a wife it is no disgrace for a man to bend
+To know how to take a licking, that wins in the end
+Uncommon unprogressiveness
+Venus of nature was melting into a Venus of art
+Violent summons to accept, which is a provocation to deny
+We cannot, men or woman, control the heart in sleep at night
+We shall want a war to teach the country the value of courage
+We don't go together into a garden of roses
+When duelling flourished on our land, frail women powerful
+Where heart weds mind, or nature joins intellect
+Who cries, Come on, and prays his gods you won't
+Why he enjoyed the privilege of seeing, and was not beside her
+With what little wisdom the world is governed
+Women are happier enslaved
+World against us  It will not keep us from trying to serve
+Years are the teachers of the great rocky natures
+You'll have to guess at half of everything he tells you
+You're going to be men, meaning something better than women
+
+
+[The End]
+
+
+
+
+************************************************************************
+The Project Gutenberg Etext Lord Ormont and his Aminta, All, by Meredith
+**********This file should be named gm88v10.txt or gm88v10.zip**********
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, gm88v11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, gm88v10a.txt
+
+This etext was produced by Pat Castevans  <patcat@ctnet.net>
+and David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+More information about this book is at the top of this file.
+
+We are now trying to release all our etexts one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+etexts, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+The most recent list of states, along with all methods for donations
+(including credit card donations and international donations), may be
+found online at http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this etext,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart
+and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]
+[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales
+of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or
+software or any other related product without express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END*
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg etext Lord Ormont and his Aminta, Entire
+by George Meredith
+
diff --git a/old/gm88v10.zip b/old/gm88v10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e947c4e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/gm88v10.zip