This was not a pleasing prospect.

On the other hand, she was the niece of an earl.  She was wealthy.  She might be an excellent friend to Elizabeth; and she could be, when she liked, both commandingly and bewitchingly ladylike.

Good!  But he was a General Officer of not more than fifty-five, in his full vigour, and she a woman of seventy!

The prospect was bleak.  It resembled an outlook on the steppes.  In point of the discipline he was to expect, he might be compared to a raw recruit, and in his own home!

However, she was a woman of mind.  One would be proud of her.

But did he know the worst of her?  A dreadful presentiment, that he did not know the worst of her, rolled an ocean of gloom upon General Ople, striking out one solitary thought in the obscurity, namely, that he was about to receive punishment for retiring from active service to a life of ease at a comparatively early age, when still in marching trim.  And the shadow of the thought was, that he deserved the punishment!

He was in his garden with the dawn.  Hard exercise is the best of opiates for dismal reflections.  The General discomposed his daughter by offering to accompany her on her morning ride before breakfast.  She considered that it would fatigue him.  ‘I am not a man of eighty!’ he cried.  He could have wished he had been.

He led the way to the park, where they soon had sight of young Rolles, who checked his horse and spied them like a vedette, but, perceiving that he had been seen, came cantering, and hailing the General with hearty wonderment.

‘And what’s this the world says, General?’ said he.  ’But we all applaud your taste.  My aunt Angela was the handsomest woman of her time.’

The General murmured in confusion, ‘Dear me!’ and looked at the young man, thinking that he could not have known the time.

‘Is all arranged, my dear General?’

’Nothing is arranged, and I beg—­I say I beg . . .  I came out for fresh air and pace.’..

The General rode frantically.

In spite of the fresh air, he was unable to eat at breakfast.  He was bound, of course, to present himself to Lady Camper, in common civility, immediately after it.

And first, what were the phrases he had to avoid uttering in her presence?  He could remember only the ‘gentlemanly residence.’  And it was a gentlemanly residence, he thought as he took leave of it.  It was one, neatly named to fit the place.  Lady Camper is indeed a most eccentric person! he decided from his experience of her.

He was rather astonished that young Rolles should have spoken so coolly of his aunt’s leaning to matrimony; but perhaps her exact age was unknown to the younger members of her family.

This idea refreshed him by suggesting the extremely honourable nature of Lady Camper’s uncomfortable confession.

He himself had an uncomfortable confession to make.  He would have to speak of his income.  He was living up to the edges of it.