cover and expose,'
he declined to seek redress or simple protection; and the miserable
spectacle was exhibited soon after of this courtly man listening to Mrs.
Barcop on the weather, and replying in acquiescence: 'It is hot.--If
your ladyship will only abstain from colours. Very hot as you say,
madam,--I do not complain of pen and ink, but I would rather escape
colours. And I dare say you find it hot too?'

Mrs. Barcop shut her eyes and sighed over the wreck of a handsome
military officer.

She asked him: 'What is your objection to colours?'

His hand was at his breast-pocket immediately, as he said: 'Have you not
seen?'--though but a few minutes back he had shown her the contents of
the packet, including a hurried glance of the famous digging scene.

By this time the entire district was in fervid sympathy with General
Ople. The ladies did not, as their lords did, proclaim astonishment that
a man should suffer a woman to goad him to a state of semi-lunacy;
but one or two confessed to their husbands, that it required a
great admiration of General Ople not to despise him, both for his
susceptibility and his patience. As for the men, they knew him to
have faced the balls in bellowing battle-strife; they knew him to
have endured privation, not only cold but downright want of food and
drink--an almost unimaginable horror to these brave daily feasters; so
they could not quite look on him in contempt; but his want of sense was
offensive, and still more so his submission to a scourging by a woman.
Not one of them would have deigned to feel it. Would they have allowed
her to see that she could sting them? They would have laughed at her. Or
they would have dragged her before a magistrate.

It was a Sunday in early Summer when General Ople walked to morning
service, unaccompanied by Elizabeth, who was unwell. The church was of
the considerate old-fashioned order, with deaf square pews, permitting
the mind to abstract itself from the sermon, or wrestle at leisure with
the difficulties presented by the preacher, as General Ople often
did, feeling not a little in love with his sincere attentiveness for
grappling with the knotty point and partially allowing the struggle to
be seen.

The Church was, besides, a sanctuary for him. Hither his enemy did not
come. He had this one place of refuge, and he almost looked a happy man
again.

He had passed into his hat and out of it, which he habitually did
standing, when who should walk