The Titans had an easier task in storming Olympus.  As yet, however, it could not be said that Sir Austin’s System had failed.  On the contrary, it had reared a youth, handsome, intelligent, well-bred, and, observed the ladies, with acute emphasis, innocent.  Where, they asked, was such another young man to be found?

“Oh!” said Lady Blandish to Sir Austin, “if men could give their hands to women unsoiled—­how different would many a marriage be!  She will be a happy girl who calls Richard husband.”

“Happy, indeed!” was the baronet’s caustic ejaculation.  “But where shall I meet one equal to him, and his match?”

“I was innocent when I was a girl,” said the lady.

Sir Austin bowed a reserved opinion.

“Do you think no girls innocent?”

Sir Austin gallantly thought them all so.

“No, that you know they are not,” said the lady, stamping.  “But they are more innocent than boys, I am sure.”

“Because of their education, madam.  You see now what a youth can be.  Perhaps, when my System is published, or rather—­to speak more humbly—­when it is practised, the balance may be restored, and we shall have virtuous young men.”

“It’s too late for poor me to hope for a husband from one of them,” said the lady, pouting and laughing.

“It is never too late for beauty to waken love,” returned the baronet, and they trifled a little.  They were approaching Daphne’s Bower, which they entered, and sat there to taste the coolness of a descending midsummer day.

The baronet seemed in a humour for dignified fooling; the lady for serious converse.

“I shall believe again in Arthur’s knights,” she said.  “When I was a girl I dreamed of one.”

“And he was in quest of the San Greal?”

“If you like.”

“And showed his good taste by turning aside for the more tangible San Blandish?”

“Of course you consider it would have been so,” sighed the lady, ruffling.

“I can only judge by our generation,” said Sir Austin, with a bend of homage.

The lady gathered her mouth.  “Either we are very mighty or you are very weak.”

“Both, madam.”

“But whatever we are, and if we are bad, bad! we love virtue, and truth, and lofty souls, in men:  and, when we meet those qualities in them, we are constant, and would die for them—­die for them.  Ah! you know men but not women.”

“The knights possessing such distinctions must be young, I presume?” said Sir Austin.

“Old, or young!”

“But if old, they are scarce capable of enterprise?”

“They are loved for themselves, not for their deeds.”

“Ah!”

“Yes—­ah!” said the lady.  “Intellect may subdue women—­make slaves of them; and they worship beauty perhaps as much as you do.  But they only love for ever and are mated when they meet a noble nature.”

Sir Austin looked at her wistfully.