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 any other visitor
it might hav