place, our knight threw down his challenge.  But the lady had scornfully rebutted this prospect of a return to chastity.  Then the form of the challenge must be:  Because the world declined to support the lady in luxury for nothing!  But what did that mean?  In other words:  she was to receive the devil’s wages without rendering him her services.  Such an arrangement appears hardly fair on the world or on the devil.  Heroes will have to conquer both before they will get them to subscribe to it.

Heroes, however, are not in the habit of wording their declarations of war at all.  Lance in rest they challenge and they charge.  Like women they trust to instinct, and graft on it the muscle of men.  Wide fly the leisurely-remonstrating hosts:  institutions are scattered, they know not wherefore, heads are broken that have not the balm of a reason why.  ’Tis instinct strikes!  Surely there is something divine in instinct.

Still, war declared, where were these hosts?  The hero could not charge down on the ladies and gentlemen in a ballroom, and spoil the quadrille.  He had sufficient reticence to avoid sounding his challenge in the Law Courts; nor could he well go into the Houses of Parliament with a trumpet, though to come to a tussle with the nation’s direct representatives did seem the likelier method.  It was likewise out of the question that he should enter every house and shop, and battle with its master in the cause of Mrs. Mount.  Where, then, was his enemy?  Everybody was his enemy, and everybody was nowhere!  Shall he convoke multitudes on Wimbledon Common?  Blue Policemen, and a distant dread of ridicule, bar all his projects.  Alas for the hero in our day!

Nothing teaches a strong arm its impotence so much as knocking at empty air.

“What can I do for this poor woman?” cried Richard, after fighting his phantom enemy till he was worn out.

“O Rip! old Rip!” he addressed his friend, “I’m distracted.  I wish I was dead!  What good am I for?  Miserable! selfish!  What have I done but make every soul I know wretched about me?  I follow my own inclinations—­ I make people help me by lying as hard as they can—­and I’m a liar.  And when I’ve got it I’m ashamed of myself.  And now when I do see something unselfish for me to do, I come upon grins—­I don’t know where to turn—­ how to act—­and I laugh at myself like a devil!”

It was only friend Ripton’s ear that was required, so his words went for little:  but Ripton did say he thought there was small matter to be ashamed of in winning and wearing the Beauty of Earth.  Richard added his customary comment of “Poor little thing!”

He fought his duello with empty air till he was exhausted.  A last letter written to his father procured him no reply.  Then, said he, I have tried my utmost.  I have tried to be dutiful—­my father won’t listen to me.  One thing I can do—­I can go down to my dear girl, and make her happy, and save her at least from some of the consequences of my rashness.