He continued.  He spoke as he thought:  he was not speaking what he was thinking.  His mind was directed on the visit of Aminta to Lady de Culme, and the tolerably wonderful twist whereby Mrs. Lawrence Finchley had vowed herself to his girl’s interests.  And he blamed neither of them; only he could not understand how it had been effected, for Aminta and Mrs. Lawrence had not been on such particularly intimate terms last week or yesterday.  His ejaculation, ‘Women!’ was, as he knew, merely ignorance roaring behind a mask of sarcasm.  But it allied him with all previous generations on the male side, and that was its virtue.  His view of the shifty turns of women got no further, for the reason that he took small account of the operations of the feelings, to the sole exercise of which he by system condemned the sex.

He was also insensibly half a grain more soured by the homage of those poor schoolboys, who called to him to take it for his reward in a country whose authorities had snubbed, whose Parliament had ignored, whose Press had abused him.  The ridiculous balance made him wilfully oblivious that he had seen his name of late eulogized in articles and in books for the right martial qualities.  Can a country treating a good soldier—­not serving it for pay—­in so scurvy a fashion, be struck too hard with our disdain?  One cannot tell it in too plain a language how one despises its laws, its moralities, its sham of society.  The Club, some choice anecdotists, two or three listeners to his dolences clothed as diatribes; a rubber, and the sight of his girl at home, composed, with a week’s shooting now and then, his round of life now that she refused to travel.  What a life for a soldier in his vigour.  Weyburn was honoured by the earl’s company on the walk to Chiallo’s.  In the street of elegant shops they met Lord Adderwood, and he, as usual, appeared in the act of strangling one of his flock of yawns, with gentlemanly consideration for the public.  Exercise was ever his temporary specific for these incurables.  Flinging off his coat, he cast away the cynic style engendering or engendered by them.  He and Weyburn were for a bout.  Sir John Randeller and Mr. Morsfield were at it, like Bull in training and desperado foiled.  A French ‘maitre d’armes,’ famed in ‘escrime,’ standing near Captain Chiallo, looked amused in the eyes, behind a mask of professional correctness.  He had come on an excursion for the display of his art.  Sir John’s very sturdy defence was pierced.  Weyburn saluted the Frenchman as an acquaintance, and they shook hands, chatted, criticized, nodded.  Presently he and his adversary engaged, vizored and in their buckram, and he soon proved to be too strong for Adderwood, as the latter expected and had notified to Lord Ormont before they crossed the steel.  My lord had a pleasant pricking excitement in the sound.  There was a pretty display between Weyburn and the ‘escrimeur,’ who neatly and kindly trifled, took a point and returned one, and at the finish complimented him.  The earl could see that he had to be sufficiently alert.