Lord Ormont and his Aminta, v1

it less a Frenchman," Weyburn said, in a to

oorer compliment t

ther; she dropped her

by nature. She was the wo

dier,

and mine are much

ecre

ot designed to carry her opi

ply: "We hope to

, hardly voice, as when one of the unschooled mino

think it

brill

rmed for a

go as the

n renouncin

g what we c

the taste for

ainly

oolmaster" in repetition behind her shut

as to be spurned. A kick would have been a refreshment. Yet he was unashamed of the cause i

per flo

n down there. I met Mr. Shalders y

e up fro

er last week,

ed him for her title at that juncture o

as joined the D

py imagination. He goes t

one to dignif

his enth

o her thoughts; Weybu

rce credible old time to smite at his breast, in the presence of these eyes. A

young Frenchman's not ent

legend is weak

of an o

and

o be,-he gave it up

ered; and he was obedient to the veiled direction of he

won

a small allowance for me for years. She would not have hesit

s a brave boy. H

of us has

an ambi

way at the

t usually

f us 'dignify our callin

she said; and it was as good to him to hear as the begging pardon, though

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

rmy," she remarked; and the remark had a so

all rules and the country come

d not ref

en they would give commissions to men of my age o

distasteful: "That profession-must you not take..

exchange his frock for a cavalry sabre," said he. "That is tr

he

e Cont

America b

ell suit the purpo

e others

e is a German and an

a Com

asters! Companies of

And they have their co

bition for any title

r; it is no

er face, he insisted on reducing to hideous material wreck the

, America. You would b

ric

ish, Americans, Italians, if they will come; Spaniards and Portuguese, and Scandinavians, Russians as

d where on the Cont

xed on is in

l have s

that, as an

led the young schoolmaster; and she said

, of course-at first. We t

the spot? Is t

eighbouring a water, not quite to be called a

on a country home where there was no sw

must be

likely to be es

tone: "Money is requir

ing some day; I don't

ther questions. T

r work to do,

t him from it, and rose. She bowed again as she passed t

nder the truncheon-stroke of their colloquy. Lines of Browny's letters were fier

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 seem

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 Brow

e 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 s

ly to the vortex of the fools, and ro

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; the

e 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 fles

ence, he saw the contents as an avenue of b

upon how it had come to pass, and let the curtain hang, though dramas and romances, wi

n 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 h

eemed 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. C

e 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

ssed 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 v

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

hall. He knew her for the person Lady Charlotte called "the woman's aunt," w

orrected her incivility with

he 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 Ormo

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 Brow

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 s

n 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 wor

e of my lord. The dinner had passed with the stiff dialogue peculiar to couples under supervision of their inf

h 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 m

be sure, L

r, concerned his lordship's extraordinary indifference to t

on ran, is one esta

e phrased: "Yes, that is

, 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

ITOR'S B

inker is one of

startles him as

rowny were forbidden

twenty-year-old

enthusiasm for the

be if curious things

to tell a spicy st

usly-It's the wa

thed a

a ration

artifice to

inclinations a

indicate the end o

rt at every issue

sh and gloomy tha

to teach the country

ss at half of ever

men, meaning someth

e E

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