our Indian Empire!  He could not condone the injury done to him by entering among them again.  Too like the kicked cur, that!  He retired—­call it ‘sulked in his tent,’ if you like.  His wife had to share his fortunes.  He being slighted, she necessarily was shadowed.  For a while she bore it contentedly enough; then began her mousy scratches to get into the room off the wainscot, without blame from him; she behaved according to her female nature.

Yes, but the battles with Charlotte forced on his recognition once more, and violently, the singular consequences of his retirement and Coriolanus quarrel with his countrymen.  He had doomed himself ever since to a contest with women.  First it was his Queen of Amazons, who, if vanquished, was not so easily vanquished, and, in fact, doubtfully,—­for now, to propitiate her, he had challenged, and must overcome or be disgraced, the toughest Amazonian warrior man could stand against at cast of dart or lock of arms.  No day scored an advantage; and she did not apparently suffer fatigue.  He did:  that is to say, he was worried and hurried to have the wrangle settled and Charlotte at Aminta’s feet.  He gained not an inch of ground.  His principle in a contention of the sort was to leave the woman to the practice of her obvious artifices, and himself simply hammer, incessantly hammer.  But Charlotte hammered as well.  The modest position of the defensive negative was not to her taste.  The moment he presented himself she flew out upon some yesterday’s part of the argument and carried the war across the borders, in attacks on his character and qualities—­his weakness regarding women, his incapacity to forgive, and the rest.  She hammered on that head.  As for any prospect of a termination of the strife, he could see none in her joyful welcome to him and regretful parting and pleased appointment of the next meeting day after day.

The absurdest of her devices for winding him off his aim was to harp on some new word she had got hold of as, for example, to point out to him his aptitudes, compliment him on his aptitudes, recommend him to study and learn the limitations of his aptitudes!  She revelled in something the word unfolded to her.

However, here was the point:  she had to be beaten.  So, if she, too, persisted in hammering, he must employ her female weapon of artifice with her.  One would gladly avoid the stooping to it in a civil dispute, in which one is not so gloriously absolved for lying and entrapping as in splendid war.

Weyburn’s name was announced to him at an early hour on Thursday morning.  My lord nodded to the footman; he nodded to himself over a suggestion started in a tactical intelligence by the name.

’Ah! you ‘re off?’ he accosted the young man.

‘I have come to take my leave, my lord.’

‘Nothing new in the morning papers?’

‘A report that Captain May intends to return and surrender.’

‘Not before a month has passed, if he follows my counsel.’