Discovering that his fair partner of the wasting life was—­he struggled to quench the revelation—­Aminta, he stopped the dance.  If there was no gain in whirling fancifully with one of the sex, a spin of a minute with her was downright bankruptcy.

He was young, full of blood; his heart led him away from the door Lord Ormont had exposed; at which a little patient unemotional watchfulness might have intimated to him something besides the simple source of the old hero’s complex chapter of conduct.  As it was, Weyburn did see the rancour of a raw wound in operation.  But he moralized and disapproved; telling himself, truly enough, that so it would not have been with him; instead of sounding at my lord’s character, and his condition of the unjustly neglected great soldier, for the purpose of asking how that raw wound would affect an injured veteran, who compressed, almost repressed, the roar of Achilles, though his military bright name was to him his Briseis.

CHAPTER X

A SHORT PASSAGE IN THE GAME PLAYED BY TWO

Politest of men in the domestic circle and everywhere among women, Lord Ormont was annoyed to find himself often gruffish behind the tie of his cravat.  Indeed, the temper of our eminently serene will feel the strain of a doldrum-dulness that is goaded to activity by a nettle.  The forbearance he carried farther than most could do was tempted to kick, under pressure of Mrs. Nargett Pagnell.  Without much blaming Aminta, on whose behalf he submitted to it, and whose resolution to fix in England had brought it to this crisis, he magnanimously proposed to the Fair Enemy he forced her to be, and liked to picture her as being, a month in Paris.

Aminta declined it for herself; after six or more years of travelling, she wished to settle, and know her country, she said:  a repetition remark, wide of the point, and indicatory to the game of Pull she was again playing beneath her smooth visage, unaware that she had the wariest of partners at the game.

‘But go you—­do, I beg,’ she entreated.  ’It will give you new impressions; and I cannot bear to tie you down here.’

‘How you can consent to be tied down here, is the wonder to me!’ said he.  ’When we travelled through the year, just visited England and were off again, we were driving on our own road.  Vienna in April and May—­what do you say?  You like the reviews there, and the dances, concerts, Zigeuner bands, military Bohemian bands.  Or Egypt to-morrow, if you like—­though you can’t be permitted to swim in the Nile, as you wanted.  Come, Xarifa, speak it.  I go to exile without you.  Say you come.’

She smiled firmly.  The name of her honeymoon days was not a cajolery to her.

His name had been that of the Christian Romancero Knight Durandarte, and she gave it to him, to be on the proper level with him, while she still declined.