ome day. But Rock had
the true dash and true steel of the soldier in him, and his blue eyes
flashed over his Guards as he spoke, with a longing wish that he were
leading them on to a charge instead of pacing with them toward Hyde
Park.

Cecil turned in his saddle and looked at him with a certain wonder and
pleasure in his glance, and did not answer aloud. "The deuce--that's not
a bad idea," he thought to himself; and the idea took root and grew with
him.

Far down, very far down, so far that nobody had ever seen it, nor
himself ever expected it, there was a lurking instinct in "Beauty,"--the
instinct that had prompted him, when he sent the King at the Grand
Military cracker, with that prayer, "Kill me if you like, but don't
fail me!"--which, out of the languor and pleasure-loving temper of his
unruffled life, had a vague, restless impulse toward the fiery perils
and nervous excitement of a sterner and more stirring career.

It was only vague, for he was naturally very indolent, very gentle, very
addicted to taking all things passively, and very strongly of persuasion
that to rouse yourself for anything was a niaiserie of the strongest
possible folly; but it was there. It always is there with men of
Bertie's order, and only comes to light when the match of danger is
applied to the touchhole. Then, though "the Tenth don't dance," perhaps,
with graceful, indolent, dandy insolence, they can fight as no others
fight when Boot and Saddle rings through the morning air, and the
slashing charge sweeps down with lightning speed and falcon swoop.

"In the case of a Countess, sir, the imagination is more excited," says
Dr. Johnson, who had, I suppose, little opportunity of putting that
doctrine for amatory intrigues to the test in actual practice. Bertie,
who had many opportunities, differed with him. He found love-making in
his own polished, tranquil circles apt to become a little dull, and was
more amused by Laura Lelas. However, he was sworn to the service of the
Guenevere, and he drove his mail-phaeton down that day to another sort
of Richmond dinner, of which the lady was the object instead of the
Zu-Zu.

She enjoyed thinking herself the wife of a jealous and inexorable lord,
and arranged her flirtations to evade him with a degree of skill so
great that it was lamentable it should be thrown away on an agricultural
husband, who never dreamt that the "Fidelio-III-TstnegeR," which met his
eyes in the innocent face of his "T