Adiante, the phantom
likeness of her, similar to the finger-tips, hovers to a meeting with
some one whose heart shakes your manful frame at but a thought of it. But
this other Adiante is altogether a secondary conception, barely descried,
and chased by you that she may interpret the mystical nature of the
happiness of those two, close-linked to eternity, in advance. You would
learn it, if she would expound it; you are ready to learn it, for the
sake of knowledge; and if you link yourself to her and do as those two
are doing, it is chiefly in a spirit of imitation, in sympathy with the
darting couple ahead . . . .

Meanwhile he conversed, and seemed, to a gentleman unaware of the
vaporous activities of his brain, a young fellow of a certain practical
sense.

'We have not much to teach you in: horseflesh,' Mr. Adister said,
quitting the stables to proceed to the gardens.

'We must look alive to keep up our breed, sir,' said Patrick. 'We're
breeding too fine: and soon we shan't be able to horse our troopers. I
call that the land for horses where the cavalry's well-mounted on a
native breed.'

'You have your brother's notions of cavalry, have you!'

'I leave it to Philip to boast what cavalry can do on the field. He
knows: but he knows that troopers must be mounted: and we're fineing more
and more from bone: with the sales to foreigners! and the only chance of
their not beating us is that they'll be so good as follow our bad
example. Prussia's well horsed, and for the work it's intended to do, the
Austrian light cavalry's a model. So I'm told. I'll see for myself. Then
we sit our horses too heavy. The Saxon trooper runs headlong to flesh.
'Tis the beer that fattens and swells him. Properly to speak, we've no
light cavalry. The French are studying it, and when they take to
studying, they come to the fore. I'll pay a visit to their breeding
establishments. We've no studying here, and not a scrap of system that I
see. All the country seems armed for bullying the facts, till the
periodical panic arrives, and then it 's for lying flat and roaring--and
we'll drop the curtain, if you please.'

'You say we,' returned Mr. Adister. 'I hear you launched at us English by
the captain, your cousin, who has apparently yet to learn that we are one
people.'

'We 're held together and a trifle intermixed; I fancy it's we with him
and with me when we're talking of army or navy,' said Patrick. 'But
Captain Con's a bit of a politician