“Well, Mr. Armsworth, what am I to do?”

“Well, my Lord; I told you what sort of a man you’d have to do with; one that does his work thoroughly, and, I think, pays you a compliment, by thinking that you want it done thoroughly.”

Lord Minchampstead was of the same opinion; but he did not say so.  Few, indeed, have ever heard Lord Minchampstead give his opinion:  though many a man has seen him act on it.

“I’ll send down orders to my agent.”

“Don’t.”

“Why, then, my good friend?”

“Agents are always in league with farmers, or guardians, or builders, or drain-tile makers, or attorneys, or bankers, or somebody; and either you’ll be told that the work don’t need doing; or have a job brewed out of it, to get off a lot of unsaleable drain-tiles, or cracked soil-pans; or to get farm ditches dug, and perhaps the highway rates saved building culverts, and fifty dodges beside.  I know their game; and you ought, too, by now, my lord, begging your pardon.”

“Perhaps I do, Mark,” said his lordship with a chuckle.

“So, I say, let the man that found the fox, run the fox, and kill the fox, and take the brush home.”

“And so it shall be,” quoth my Lord Minchampstead.

CHAPTER IX.

“AM I NOT A WOMAN AND A SISTER?”

But what was the mysterious bond between La Cordifiamma and the American, which had prevented Scoutbush from following the example of his illustrious progenitor, and taking a viscountess from off the stage?

Certainly, any one who had seen her with him on the morning after Scoutbush’s visit to the Mellots, would have said that, if the cause was love, the love was all on one side.

She was standing by the fireplace in a splendid pose, her arm resting on the chimney-piece, the book from which she had been reciting in one hand, the other playing in her black curls, as her eyes glanced back ever and anon at her own profile in the mirror.  Stangrave was half sitting in a low chair by her side, half kneeling on the footstool before her, looking up beseechingly, as she looked down tyrannically.

“Stupid, this reciting?  Of course it is!  I want realities, not shams; life, not the stage; nature, not art.”

“Throw away the book, then, and words, and art, and live!”

She knew well what he meant; but she answered as if she had misunderstood him.

“Thanks, I live already, and in good company enough.  My ghost-husbands are as noble as they are obedient; do all which I demand of them, and vanish on my errands when I tell them.  Can you guess who my last is?  Since I tired of Egmont, I have taken Sir Galahad, the spotless knight.  Did you ever read the Mort d’Arthur?”

“A hundred times.”

“Of course!” and she spoke in a tone of contempt so strong that it must have been affected.  “What have you not read!  And what have you copied.  No wonder that these English have been what they have been for centuries, while their heroes have been the Galahads, and their Homer the Mort d’Arthur.”