tification; and gentlemanliness made the
place, as the General said, an ideal English home.

The compass of the estate was half an acre, and perhaps a perch or two,
just the size for the hugging love General Ople was happiest in giving.
He wisely decided to retain the old couple at the lodge, whose members
were used to restriction, and also not to purchase a cow, that would have
wanted pasture. With the old man, while the old woman attended to the
bell at the handsome front entrance with its gilt-spiked gates, he
undertook to do the gardening; a business he delighted in, so long as he
could perform it in a gentlemanly manner, that is to say, so long as he
was not overlooked. He was perfectly concealed from the road. Only one
house, and curiously indeed, only one window of the house, and further to
show the protection extended to Douro Lodge, that window an attic,
overlooked him. And the house was empty.

The house (for who can hope, and who should desire a commodious house,
with conservatories, aviaries, pond and boat-shed, and other joys of
wealth, to remain unoccupied) was taken two seasons later by a lady, of
whom Fame, rolling like a dust-cloud from the place she had left,
reported that she was eccentric. The word is uninstructive: it does not
frighten. In a lady of a certain age, it is rather a characteristic of
aristocracy in retirement. And at least it implies wealth.

General Ople was very anxious to see her. He had the sentiment of humble
respectfulness toward aristocracy, and there was that in riches which
aroused his admiration. London, for instance, he was not afraid to say he
thought the wonder of the world. He remarked, in addition, that the
sacking of London would suffice to make every common soldier of the
foreign army of occupation an independent gentleman for the term of his
natural days. But this is a nightmare! said he, startling himself with an
abhorrent dream of envy of those enriched invading officers: for Booty is
the one lovely thing which the military mind can contemplate in the
abstract. His habit was to go off in an explosion of heavy sighs when he
had delivered himself so far, like a man at war with himself.

The lady arrived in time: she received the cards of the neighbourhood,
and signalized her eccentricity by paying no attention to them, excepting
the card of a Mrs. Baerens, who had audience of her at once. By express
arrangement, the card of General Wilson Ople, as her nearest neighbo