At her request, he conducted her to her carriage.  He took a seat beside her, obediently.  He felt that he was being sketched, and comported himself like a child’s flat man, that jumps at the pulling of a string.

‘Where have you left your girl, General?’

Before he could rally his wits to answer the question, he was asked: 

‘And what have you done with your necktie and collar?’

He touched his throat.

‘I am rather nervous to-day, I forgot Elizabeth,’ he said, sending his fingers in a dotting run of wonderment round his neck.

Lady Camper smiled with a triumphing humour on her close-drawn lips.

The verified absence of necktie and collar seemed to be choking him.

‘Never mind, you have been abroad without them,’ said Lady Camper, ’and that is a victory for me.  And you thought of Elizabeth first when I drew your attention to it, and that is a victory for you.  It is a very great victory.  Pray, do not be dismayed, General.  You have a handsome campaigning air.  And no apologies, if you please; I like you well enough as you are.  There is my hand.’

General Ople understood her last remark.  He pressed the lady’s hand in silence, very nervously.

’But do not shrug your head into your shoulders as if there were any possibility of concealing the thunderingly evident,’ said Lady Camper, electrifying him, what with her cordial squeeze, her kind eyes, and her singular language.  ’You have omitted the collar.  Well?  The collar is the fatal finishing touch in men’s dress; it would make Apollo look bourgeois.’

Her hand was in his:  and watching the play of her features, a spark entered General Ople’s brain, causing him, in forgetfulness of collar and caricatures, to ejaculate, ’Seventy?  Did your ladyship say seventy?  Utterly impossible!  You trifle with me.’

’We will talk when we are free of this accompaniment of carriage-wheels, General,’ said Lady Camper.

‘I will beg permission to go and fetch Elizabeth, madam.’

’Rightly thought of.  Fetch her in my carriage.  And, by the way, Mrs. Baerens was my old music-mistress, and is, I think, one year older than I. She can tell you on which side of seventy I am.’

‘I shall not require to ask, my lady,’ he said, sighing.

’Then we will send the carriage for Elizabeth, and have it out together at once.  I am impatient; yes, General, impatient:  for what?—­forgiveness.’

‘Of me, my lady?’ The General breathed profoundly.

’Of whom else?  Do you know what it is?-I don’t think you do.  You English have the smallest experience of humanity.  I mean this:  to strike so hard that, in the end, you soften your heart to the victim.  Well, that is my weakness.  And we of our blood put no restraint on the blows we strike when we think them wanted, so we are always overdoing it.’

General Ople assisted Lady Camper to alight from the carriage, which was forthwith despatched for Elizabeth.