‘To the death, madam,’ said the General.

’And now we will take a turn in the garden, Wilson Ople.  And beware of one thing, for a commencement, for you are full of weeds, and I mean to pluck out a few:  never call any place a gentlemanly residence in my hearing, nor let it come to my ears that you have been using the phrase elsewhere.  Don’t express astonishment.  At present it is enough that I dislike it.  But this only,’ Lady Camper added, ’this only if it is not your intention to withdraw from your position.’

’Madam, my lady, I was saying—­hem!—­Angela, I could not wish to withdraw.’

Lady Camper leaned with some pressure on his arm, observing, ’You have a curious attachment to antiquities.’

’My dear lady, it is your mind; I say, it is your mind:  I was saying, I am in love with your mind,’ the General endeavoured to assure her, and himself too.

‘Or is it my powers as an artist?’

‘Your mind, your extraordinary powers of mind.’

‘Well,’ said Lady Camper, ’a veteran General of Brigade is as good a crutch as a childless old grannam can have.’

And as a crutch, General Ople, parading her grounds with the aged woman, found himself used and treated.

The accuracy of his perceptions might be questioned.  He was like a man stunned by some great tropical fruit, which responds to the longing of his eyes by falling on his head; but it appeared to him, that she increased in bitterness at every step they took, as if determined to make him realize her wrinkles.

He was even so inconsequent, or so little recognized his position, as to object in his heart to hear himself called Wilson.

It is true that she uttered Wilsonople as if the names formed one word.  And on a second occasion (when he inclined to feel hurt) she remarked, ‘I fear me, Wilsonople, if we are to speak plainly, thou art but a fool.’  He, perhaps, naturally objected to that.  He was, however, giddy, and barely knew.

Yet once more the magical woman changed.  All semblance of harshness, and harridan-like spike-tonguedness vanished when she said adieu.

The astronomer, looking at the crusty jag and scoria of the magnified moon through his telescope, and again with naked eyes at the soft-beaming moon, when the crater-ridges are faint as eyebrow-pencillings, has a similar sharp alternation of prospect to that which mystified General Ople.

But between watching an orb that is only variable at our caprice, and contemplating a woman who shifts and quivers ever with her own, how vast the difference!

And consider that this woman is about to be one’s wife!  He could have believed (if he had not known full surely that such things are not) he was in the hands of a witch.

Lady Camper’s ‘adieu’ was perfectly beautiful—­a kind, cordial, intimate, above all, to satisfy his present craving, it was a lady-like adieu—­the adieu of a delicate and elegant woman, who had hardly left her anchorage by forty to sail into the fifties.