but my aunt's originality of outlook was never so invincible.
"Men don't tell on one another in affairs of passion," I protested, and
such-like worldly excuses.

"Women!" she said in high indignation, "and men! It isn't women and
men--it's him and me, George! Why don't you talk sense?

"Old passion's all very well, George, in its way, and I'm the last
person to be jealous. But this is old nonsense.... I'm not going to let
him show off what a silly old lobster he is to other women....
I'll mark every scrap of his underclothes with red letters,
'Ponderevo-Private'--every scrap.

"Going about making love indeed,--in abdominal belts!--at his time of
life!"

I cannot imagine what passed between her and my uncle. But I have no
doubt that for once her customary badinage was laid aside. How they
talked then I do not know, for I who knew them so well had never heard
that much of intimacy between them. At any rate it was a concerned and
preoccupied "God in the Car" I had to deal with in the next few days,
unusually Zzzz-y and given to slight impatient gestures that had nothing
to do with the current conversation. And it was evident that in all
directions he was finding things unusually difficult to explain.

All the intimate moments in this affair were hidden from me, but in
the end my aunt triumphed. He did not so much throw as jerk over Mrs.
Scrymgeour, and she did not so much make a novel of it as upset a huge
pailful of attenuated and adulterated female soul upon this occasion.
My aunt did not appear in that, even remotely. So that it is doubtful
if the lady knew the real causes of her abandonment. The Napoleonic hero
was practically unmarried, and he threw over his lady as Napoleon threw
over Josephine for a great alliance.

It was a triumph for my aunt, but it had its price. For some time it was
evident things were strained between them. He gave up the lady, but he
resented having to do so, deeply. She had meant more to his imagination
than one could have supposed. He wouldn't for a long time "come round."
He became touchy and impatient and secretive towards my aunt, and she, I
noted, after an amazing check or so, stopped that stream of kindly abuse
that had flowed for so long and had been so great a refreshment in their
lives. They were both the poorer for its cessation, both less happy.
She devoted herself more and more to Lady Grove and the humours and
complications of its management. The servants took to her--as t