Don't express astonishment. At present it is enough that I
dislike it. But this only,' Lady Camper added, 'this only if it is not
your intention to withdraw from your position.'

'Madam, my lady, I was saying--hem!--Angela, I could not wish to
withdraw.'

Lady Camper leaned with some pressure on his arm, observing, 'You have a
curious attachment to antiquities.'

'My dear lady, it is your mind; I say, it is your mind: I was saying, I
am in love with your mind,' the General endeavoured to assure her, and
himself too.

'Or is it my powers as an artist?'

'Your mind, your extraordinary powers of mind.'

'Well,' said Lady Camper, 'a veteran General of Brigade is as good a
crutch as a childless old grannam can have.'

And as a crutch, General Ople, parading her grounds with the aged woman,
found himself used and treated.

The accuracy of his perceptions might be questioned. He was like a man
stunned by some great tropical fruit, which responds to the longing
of his eyes by falling on his head; but it appeared to him, that she
increased in bitterness at every step they took, as if determined to
make him realize her wrinkles.

He was even so inconsequent, or so little recognized his position, as to
object in his heart to hear himself called Wilson.

It is true that she uttered Wilsonople as if the names formed one word.
And on a second occasion (when he inclined to feel hurt) she remarked,
'I fear me, Wilsonople, if we are to speak plainly, thou art but a
fool.' He, perhaps, naturally objected to that. He was, however, giddy,
and barely knew.

Yet once more the magical woman changed. All semblance of harshness, and
harridan-like spike-tonguedness vanished when she said adieu.

The astronomer, looking at the crusty jag and scoria of the magnified
moon through his telescope, and again with naked eyes at
the soft-beaming moon, when the crater-ridges are faint as
eyebrow-pencillings, has a similar sharp alternation of prospect to that
which mystified General Ople.

But between watching an orb that is only variable at our caprice, and
contemplating a woman who shifts and quivers ever with her own, how vast
the difference!

And consider that this woman is about to be one's wife! He could have
believed (if he had not known full surely that such things are not) he
was in the hands of a witch.

Lady Camper's 'adieu' was perfectly beautiful--a kind, cordial,
intimate, above all, to satisfy his present craving, it wa