If he could but have passed the injury, he would ultimately—­for his claims of service were admitted—­have had employment of some kind.  Inoccupation was poison to him; travel juggled with his malady of restlessness; really, a compression of the warrior’s natural forces.  His Aminta, pushed to it by the woman Pagnell, declined to help him in softening the virulence of the disease.  She would not travel; she would fix in this London of theirs, and scheme to be hailed the accepted Countess of Ormont.  She manoeuvred; she threw him on the veteran soldier’s instinct, and it resulted spontaneously that he manoeuvred.

Hence their game of Pull, which occupied him a little, tickled him and amused.  The watching of her pretty infantile tactics amused him too much to permit of a sidethought on the cruelty of the part he played.  She had every luxury, more than her station by right of birth would have supplied.

But he was astonished to find that his Aminta proved herself clever, though she had now and then said something pointed.  She was in awe of him:  notwithstanding which, clearly she meant to win and pull him over.  He did not dislike her for it; she might use her weapons to play her game; and that she should bewitch men—­a, man like Morsfield—­was not wonderful.  On the other hand, her conquest of Mrs. Lawrence Finchley scored tellingly:  that was unaccountably queer.  What did Mrs. Lawrence expect to gain? the sage lord asked.  He had not known women devoid of a positive practical object of their own when they bestirred themselves to do a friendly deed.

Thanks to her conquest of Mrs. Lawrence, his Aminta was gaining ground—­daily she made an advance; insomuch that he had heard of himself as harshly blamed in London for not having countenanced her recent and rather imprudent move.  In other words, whenever she gave a violent tug at their game of Pull, he was expected to second it.  But the world of these English is too monstrously stupid in what it expects, for any of its extravagances to be followed by interjections.

All the while he was trimming and rolling a field of armistice at Steignton, where they could discuss the terms he had a right to dictate, having yielded so far.  Would she be satisfied with the rule of his ancestral hall, and the dispensing of hospitalities to the county?  No, one may guess:  no woman is ever satisfied.  But she would have to relinquish her game, counting her good round half of the honours.  Somewhat more, on the whole.  Without beating, she certainly had accomplished the miracle of bending him.  To time and a wife it is no disgrace for a man to bend.  It is the form of submission of the bulrush to the wind, of courtesy in the cavalier to a lady.

‘Oh, here you are, Rowsley,’ Lady Charlotte exclaimed at the drawing room door.  ’Well, and I don’t like those Louis Quinze cabinets; and that modern French mantelpiece clock is hideous.  You seem to furnish in downright contempt of the women you invite to sit in the room.  Lord help the wretched woman playing hostess in such a pinchbeck bric-a-brac shop, if there were one!  She ‘s spared, at all events.’