’Are you prepared, if your daughter is asked in marriage, to settle ten thousand pounds on her, General Ople?’

The General collected himself.  In his heart he thoroughly appreciated the moral beauty of Lady Camper’s extreme solicitude on behalf of his daughter’s provision; but he would have desired a postponement of that and other material questions belonging to a distant future until his own fate was decided.

So he said:  ’Your ladyship’s generosity is very marked.  I say it is very marked.’

‘How, my good General Ople! how is it marked in any degree?’ cried Lady Camper.  ’I am not generous.  I don’t pretend to be; and certainly I don’t want the young people to think me so.  I want to be just.  I have assumed that you intend to be the same.  Then will you do me the favour to reply to me?’

The General smiled winningly and intently, to show her that he prized her, and would not let her escape his eulogies.

’Marked, in this way, dear madam, that you think of my daughter’s future more than I. I say, more than her father himself does.  I know I ought to speak more warmly, I feel warmly.  I was never an eloquent man, and if you take me as a soldier, I am, as, I have ever been in the service, I was saying I am Wilson Ople, of the grade of General, to be relied on for executing orders; and, madam, you are Lady Camper, and you command me.  I cannot be more precise.  In fact, it is the feeling of the necessity for keeping close to the business that destroys what I would say.  I am in fact lamentably incompetent to conduct my own case.’

Lady Camper left her chair.

‘Dear me, this is very strange, unless I am singularly in error,’ she said.

The General now faintly guessed that he might be in error, for his part.

But he had burned his ships, blown up his bridges; retreat could not be thought of.

He stood, his head bent and appealing to her sideface, like one pleadingly in pursuit, and very deferentially, with a courteous vehemence, he entreated first her ladyship’s pardon for his presumption, and then the gift of her ladyship’s hand.

As for his language, it was the tongue of General Ople.  But his bearing was fine.  If his clipped white silken hair spoke of age, his figure breathed manliness.  He was a picture, and she loved pictures.

For his own sake, she begged him to cease.  She dreaded to hear of something ‘gentlemanly.’

‘This is a new idea to me, my dear General,’ she said.  ’You must give me time.  People at our age have to think of fitness.  Of course, in a sense, we are both free to do as we like.  Perhaps I may be of some aid to you.  My preference is for absolute independence.  And I wished to talk of a different affair.  Come to me tomorrow.  Do not be hurt if I decide that we had better remain as we are.’

The General bowed.  His efforts, and the wavering of the fair enemy’s flag, had inspired him with a positive re-awakening of masculine passion to gain this fortress.  He said well:  ’I have, then, the happiness, madam, of being allowed to hope until to-morrrow?’