woman holds him away from me
now. I say no harm of her. She may be right enough from her point of
view; or it mayn't be owing to her. I wouldn't blame a woman. Well,
but my point with you is, you swallow the woman's aunt--the lady's
aunt--without betraying you suffer at all. Lord Ormont has eyes of an
eagle for a speck above the surface. All the more because the aunt is a
gabbling idiot does he--I say it seeing it--fire up to defend her from
the sneer of the lip or half a sign of it! No, you would be an your
guard; I can trust you. Of course you'd behave like the gentleman you
are where any kind of woman's concerned; but you mustn't let a shadow
be seen, think what you may. The woman--lady--calling herself Lady
Ormont,--poor woman, I should do the same in her place,--she has a hard
game to play; I have to be for my family: she has manners, I'm told;
holds herself properly. She fancies she brings him up to the altar, in
the end, by decent behaviour. That's a delusion. It's creditable to her,
only she can't understand the claims of the family upon a man like
my brother. When you have spare time--'kick-ups,' he need to call it,
writing to me from school--come here; you're welcome, after three days'
notice. I shall be glad to see you again. You've gone some way to make a
man of Leo."

He liked her well: he promised to come. She was a sinewy bite of the
gentle sex, but she had much flavour, and she gave nourishment.

"Let me have three days' notice," she repeated.

"Not less, Lady Charlotte," said he.

Weyburn received intimation from Arthur Abner of the likely day Lord
Ormont would appoint, and he left Olmer for London to hold himself in
readiness. Lady Charlotte and Leo drove him to meet the coach. Philippa,
so strangely baffled in her natural curiosity, begged for a seat; she
begged to be allowed to ride. Petitions were rejected. She stood at
the window seeing "Grandmama's tutor," as she named him, carried off by
grandmama. Her nature was avenged on her tyrant grandmama: it brought
up almost to her tongue thoughts which would have remained subterranean,
under control of her habit of mind, or the nursery's modesty, if she
had been less tyrannically treated. They were subterranean thoughts,
Nature's original, such as the sense of injustice will rouse in young
women; and they are better unstirred, for they ripen girls over-rapidly
when they are made to revolve near the surface. It flashed on the girl
why she had been tre