d he laughed slightly up to an arresting cough, and made
the mantelpiece ornaments pass muster.

General Ople was the hero to champion a lady whose airs of haughtiness
caused her to be somewhat backbitten. He assured everybody, that Lady
Camper was much misunderstood; she was a most remarkable woman; she was a
most affable and highly intelligent lady. Building up her attributes on a
splendid climax, he declared she was pious, charitable, witty, and really
an extraordinary artist. He laid particular stress on her artistic
qualities, describing her power with the brush, her water-colour
sketches, and also some immensely clever caricatures. As he talked of no
one else, his friends heard enough of Lady Camper, who was anything but a
favourite. The Pollingtons, the Wilders, the Wardens, the Baerens, the
Goslings, and others of his acquaintance, talked of Lady Camper and
General Ople rather maliciously. They were all City people, and they
admired the General, but mourned that he should so abjectly have fallen
at the feet of a lady as red with rouge as a railway bill. His not seeing
it showed the state he was in. The sister of Mrs. Pollington, an amiable
widow, relict of a large City warehouse, named Barcop, was chilled by a
falling off in his attentions. His apology for not appearing at garden
parties was, that he was engaged to wait on Lady Camper.

And at one time, her not condescending to exchange visits with the
obsequious General was a topic fertile in irony. But she did condescend.
Lady Camper came to his gate unexpectedly, rang the bell, and was let in
like an ordinary visitor. It happened that the General was gardening--not
the pretty occupation of pruning--he was digging--and of necessity his
coat was off, and he was hot, dusty, unpresentable. From adoring earth as
the mother of roses, you may pass into a lady's presence without
purification; you cannot (or so the General thought) when you are caught
in the act of adoring the mother of cabbages. And though he himself loved
the cabbage equally with the rose, in his heart respected the vegetable
yet more than he esteemed the flower, for he gloried in his kitchen
garden, this was not a secret for the world to know, and he almost heeled
over on his beam ends when word was brought of the extreme honour Lady
Camper had done him. He worked his arms hurriedly into his fatigue
jacket, trusting to get away to the house and spend a couple of minutes
on his adornment; and with a