‘Aminta,’ said she, rather in the style of Cuper’s boys, when the name was a strange one to them.  ’I remember my Italian master reading out a poem when I was a girl.  I read poetry then.  You wouldn’t have imagined that.  I did, and liked it.  I hate old age.  It changes you so.  None of my children know me as I was when I had life in me and was myself, and my brother Rowsley called me Cooey.  They think me a hard old woman.  I was Cooey through the woods and over the meadows and down stream to Rowsley.  Old age is a prison wall between us and young people.  They see a miniature head and bust, and think it a flattery—­won’t believe it.  After I married I came to understand that the world we are in is a world to fight in, or under we go.  But I pity the young who have to cast themselves off and take up arms.  Young women above all.’

Why had she no pity for Aminta?  Weyburn asked it of his feelings, and he had the customary insurgent reply from them.

‘You haven’t seen Steignton yet,’ she continued.  ’No place on earth is equal to Steignton for me.  It ’s got the charm.  Here at Olmer I’m a mother and a grandmother—­the “devil of an old-woman” my neighbours take me to be.  She hasn’t been to Steignton, either.  No, and won’t go there, though she’s working her way round, she supposes.  He’ll do everything for his “Aminta,” but he won’t take her to Steignton.  I’m told now she’s won Lady de Culme.  That Mrs. Lawrence Finclhley has dropped the curtsey to her great-aunt and sworn to be a good girl, for a change, if Lady de Culme will do the chaperon, and force Lord Ormont’s hand.  My brother shrugs.  There’ll be a nice explosion one day soon.  Presented?  The Court won’t have her.  That I know for positive.  If she’s pushed forward, she ’ll be bitterly snubbed.  It ’s on the heads of those women —­silly women!  I can’t see the game Mrs. Lawrence Finchley’s playing.  She’d play for fun.  If they’d come to me, I ’d tell them I ’ve proof she ’s not the Countess of Ormont:  positive proof.  You look?  I have it.  I hold something; and not before,—­(he may take his Aminta to Steignton, he may let her be presented, she may wear his name publicly, I say he’s laughing at them, snapping his fingers at them louder and louder the more they seem to be pushing him into a corner, until—­I know my brother Rowsley!—­and, poor dear fellow! a man like that, the best cavalry general England ever had:—­they’ll remember it when there comes a cry for a general from India:  that’s the way with the English; only their necessities teach them to be just!)—­he to be reduced to be out-manoeuvring a swarm of women,—­I tell them, not before my brother Rowsley comes to me for what he handed to my care and I keep safe for him, will I believe he has made or means to make his Aminta Countess of Ormont.’

They were at the steps of the house.  Turning to Weyburn there, the inexhaustible Lady Charlotte remarked that their conversation had given her pleasure.  Leo was hanging on to one of his hands the next minute.  A small girl took the other.  Philippa and Beatrice were banished damsels.