Lord Ormont and his Aminta, v1

elds or swallows return to their eaves. He forsook the hunt to roam the Continent, one of the vulgar band of tourists,

ggle 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 ignora

ing of him as engaged up

mo

outcry: "Writing them?" sig

e 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

is the person to imagine and induce to the commission of such folly. "What do you think? You have

ving a hand in it. She worships, and that

nderstand g

aks

she w

r had a lett

s the woman-would marry her t

ceremony Ormont has per

you are ready. She d

contra

on for now seven years, and, as far

ever trick of having him

e people t

aunt to ad

swallow the wo

e is bound to

on everywhere she's adm

e admission to various

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 bi

holesome dread

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 don't say no; I've not discove

scovered in the ha

martly, and she admired his impassiveness under the

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 nobod

ton-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

Lady Charlotte was fou

the subject filled the s

drive a creaky wheel

ing late in

his name, was caused by an instantaneous perception and refection that it would be pruden

nd of Mr. Abn

. He replied, in an ass

retension to be call

you a

like a laugh almost out of him, b

am

amed to tell me you

at

ike th

I know

Arthur Abner. Now go and eat. Come back to me when you've done.

r 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

the battle-field, Arthur Abner tells me," was her somewhat severely-ton

preliminary of an indi

a

f his wounds in h

not enter t

an income

y 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

f it plucked her back to caution with occasional jerks-quaint alternatio

why I mount red a little-if I do it-is, you mention Lord Ormont,

n; and you're old enough to understand the temptation: they're so silly. All the more, i

man's eyeb

e 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

nsidering 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 t

, 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,

where there's a woman." She refused her implicit trust to sain

nselessly 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 nam

ought upon such matters," sh

s hardl

his head fell to reckoning of the

for close inspection by the

y twenty-s

mong men: have y

otte. Opportunity has be

n col

y 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 d

rew the door open, and

ball. 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 accomplish

England, and the school of honour that it is to our lower population. "Fifty times better for them than cock-fight

her of those popular pastimes. As he disapproved without squeamishness, the impulsive but

, "Goodnight, Leo," continued the conversation. The boy went away, visibly relieved of the cramp

of the look of him?

ave 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

nk fit," said

ishonouring 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 king

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 swimme

fend his choice of t

t as hard to read. And don't tell me a young man can read women. Boys and women go on their instincts. Egyptologists ca

me 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 ma

d 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

im. She liked few. Forthwith, in the manner of her particul

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 writ

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

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 enthus

g 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

e chose to nurse and be governed by the maxim for herself: Never propose a plan to him, if yo

rded the young man and "those hateful Memoirs," requesting that her name should not be mentioned in the affair, because she was

ont 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.

efore Weyburn's departure. Arthur Abner had met Lord Ormont in the street, had spoken of the rumour of Memoirs prom

ered that to be as go

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

was a sinewy bite of the gentle sex, but she

ree days' notic

ady Charlott

ons 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 ha

utors," was all that she said