om the conflict with contemporary opinion,
stamped excellent, or have been pushed by the roar of contemporaneous
applauses to wear the leather-and-gilt uniform of our Immortals, until a
more qualmish posterity disgorges them. The books had costly bindings.
Lord Ormont's treatment of Literature appeared to resemble Lady
Charlotte's, in being reverential and uninquiring. The books she bought
to read were Memoirs of her time by dead men and women once known to her.
These did fatigue duty in cloth or undress. It was high drill with all of
Lord Ormont's books, and there was not a modern or a minor name among the
regiments. They smelt strongly of the bookseller's lump lots by order;
but if a show soldiery, they were not a sham, like a certain row of
venerably-titled backs, that Lady Charlotte, without scruple, left
standing to blow an ecclesiastical trumpet of empty contents; any one
might have his battle of brains with them, for the twining of an absent
key.

The door opened. Weyburn bowed to his old star in human shape: a grey
head on square shoulders, filling the doorway. He had seen at Olmer Lady
Charlotte's treasured miniature portrait of her brother; a perfect
likeness, she said--complaining the neat instant of injustice done to the
fire of his look.

Fire was low down behind the eyes at present. They were quick to scan and
take summary of their object, as the young man felt while observing for
himself. Height and build of body were such as might be expected in the
brother of Lady Charlotte and from the tales of his prowess. Weyburn had
a glance back at Cuper's boys listening to the tales.

The soldier-lord's manner was courteously military--that of an
established superior indifferent to the deferential attitude he must
needs enact. His curt nick of the head, for a response to the visitor's
formal salutation, signified the requisite acknowledgment, like a city
creditor's busy stroke of the type-stamp receipt upon payment.

The ceremony over, he pitched a bugle voice to fit the contracted area:
"I hear from Mr. Abner that you have made acquaintance with Olmer. Good
hunting country there."

"Lady Charlotte kindly gave me a mount, my lord."

"I knew your father by name--Colonel Sidney Weyburn. You lost him at
Toulouse. We were in the Peninsula; I was at Talavera with him. Bad day
for our cavalry."

"Our officers were young at their work then."

"They taught the Emperor's troops to respect a charge of English horse