ful experience of
that fact. First we see them aiming themselves at their hero; next they
are shooting an eye at the handsome man. The thirst of nature comes after
that of their fancy, in conventional women. Sick of the hero tried, tired
of their place in the market, no longer ashamed to acknowledge it, they
begin to consult their own taste for beauty--they have it quite as much
as the men have it; and when their worshipped figure of manliness, in a
romantic sombrero, is a threadbare giant, showing bruises, they sink on
their inherent desire for a dance with the handsome man. And the really
handsome man is the most extraordinary of the rarities. No wonder that
when he appears he slays them, walks over them like a pestilence!

This young Weyburn would touch the fancy of a woman of a romantic turn.
Supposing her enthusiastic in her worship of the hero, after a number of
years--for anything may be imagined where a woman is concerned--why,
another enthusiasm for the same object, and on the part of a stranger, a
stranger with effective eyes, rapidly leads to sympathy. Suppose the
reverse--the enthusiasm gone to dust, or become a wheezy old bellows, as
it does where there's disparity of age, or it frequently does--then the
sympathy with a good-looking stranger comes more rapidly still.

These were Lady Charlotte's glances right and left--idle flights of the
eye of a mounted Amazon across hedges at the canter along the main road
of her scheme; which was to do a service to the young man she liked and
to the brother she loved, for the marked advantage of both equally;
perhaps for the chance of a little gossip to follow about that tenacious
woman by whom her brother was held hard and fast, kept away from friends
and relatives, isolated, insomuch as to have given up living on his
estate--the old home!--because he would not disgrace it or incur odium by
taking her there.

In consequence of Lord Ormont's resistance to pressure from her on two or
three occasions, she chose to nurse and be governed by the maxim for
herself: Never propose a plan to him, if you want it adopted. That was
her way of harmlessly solacing love's vindictiveness for an injury.

She sent Arthur Abner a letter, thanking him for his recommendation of
young Mr. Weyburn, stating her benevolent wishes as regarded the young
man and "those hateful Memoirs," requesting that her name should not be
mentioned in the affair, because she was anxious on all grounds to have