ting so still, with her hands
resting on the keys, he was silent in sheer adoration.

A voice from the door ejaculated:

"Oh! ma'am--oh! my lord! They're devilling a gentleman on the green!"

CHAPTER VI

When the immortal Don set out to ring all the bells of merriment, he
was followed by one clown. Charles Courtier on the other hand had always
been accompanied by thousands, who really could not understand the
conduct of this man with no commercial sense. But though he puzzled
his contemporaries, they did not exactly laugh at him, because it was
reported that he had really killed some men, and loved some women. They
found such a combination irresistible, when coupled with an appearance
both vigorous and gallant. The son of an Oxfordshire clergyman, and
mounted on a lost cause, he had been riding through the world ever since
he was eighteen, without once getting out of the saddle. The secret of
this endurance lay perhaps in his unconsciousness that he was in the
saddle at all. It was as much his natural seat as office stools to other
mortals. He made no capital out of errantry, his temperament being far
too like his red-gold hair, which people compared to flames, consuming
all before them. His vices were patent; too incurable an optimism; an
admiration for beauty such as must sometimes have caused him to forget
which woman he was most in love with; too thin a skin; too hot a heart;
hatred of humbug, and habitual neglect of his own interest. Unmarried,
and with many friends, and many enemies, he kept his body like a
sword-blade, and his soul always at white heat.

That one who admitted to having taken part in five wars should be mixing
in a by-election in the cause of Peace, was not so inconsistent as might
be supposed; for he had always fought on the losing side, and there
seemed to him at the moment no side so losing as that of Peace. No great
politician, he was not an orator, nor even a glib talker; yet a quiet
mordancy of tongue, and the white-hot look in his eyes, never failed to
make an impression of some kind on an audience.

There was, however, hardly a corner of England where orations on behalf
of Peace had a poorer chance than the Bucklandbury division. To say
that Courtier had made himself unpopular with its matter-of-fact,
independent, stolid, yet quick-tempered population, would be inadequate.
He had outraged their beliefs, and roused the most profound suspicions.
They could not, for the life of th