half-piteous doubt and compunction had something childish, which
made her smile as she answered: 'You had better have done as you were
told.'

'The surest road to silliness,' said Louis, whose tendency was to
moralize the more, the more tired he was, 'is to think one is going to
do something fine! It is dismal work to come out at the other end of
an illusion.'

'With a foot aching as, I am afraid, yours does.'

'I should not mind that, but that I made such horrid mistakes!'

These weighed upon his mind so much, that he went on, half aloud,
rehearsing the manoeuvres and orders in which he had failed, from the
difficulty of taking the command of his troop for the first time, when
bewildered with pain and discomfort. The others came in, and James
looked rabid; Louis stole a glance now and then at his father, who
preserved a grave silence, while Clara stood aloof, comparing the
prostrate figure in blue and silver to all the wounded knights in
history or fiction.

He was past going in to dinner, and the party were 'civil and
melancholy,' Mrs. Frost casting beseeching looks at her grandson, who
sat visibly chafing at the gloom that rested on the Earl's brow, and
which increased at each message of refusal of everything but iced
water. At last Mrs. Frost carried off some grapes from the dessert to
tempt him, and as she passed through the open window--her readiest way
to the library--the Earl's thanks concluded with a disconsolate murmur
'quite ill,' and 'abominable folly;' a mere soliloquy and nearly
inaudible, but sufficient spark to produce the explosion.

'Fitzjocelyn's motives deserve no such name as folly,' James cried,
with stammering eagerness.

'I know you did not encourage him,' said Lord Ormersfield.

'I did,' said a young, clear voice, raised in alarm at her own
boldness; 'Jem knew nothing of it, but I thought it right.'

Lord Ormersfield made a little courteous inclination with his head,
which annihilated Clara upon the spot.

'I doubt whether I should have done right in striving to prevent him,'
said James. 'Who can appreciate the moral effect of heroism?'

'Heroism in the cause of a silver jacket!'

'Now, that is the most unfair thing in the world!' cried James, always
most violent when he launched out with his majestic cousin. 'There is
not a man living more careless of his appearance. You do him justice,
Mrs. Ponsonby?'

'Yes, I do not believe that vanity had anything to do with it. A man