the real attack comes.' Was it
true?

'But say what you propose?' she asked.

Lord Ormont proposed vigilance and drill; a small degree of
self-sacrifice on the part of the population, and a look-out head in
the War Department. He proposed to have a nation of stout-braced men
laughing at the foreign bully or bandit, instead of being a pack of
whimpering women; whom he likened to the randomly protestant geese of
our country roadside, heads out a yard in a gabble of defence while they
go backing.

So thereupon Aminta's notion of a resemblance in the mutual thought
subsided; she relapsed on the cushioning sentiment that she was a woman.
And--only a woman! he might exclaim, if it pleased him; though he would
never be able to say she was one of the whimpering. She, too, had
the choice to indulge in scorn of the superior man stone blind to
proceedings intimately affecting him--if he cared! One might doubt it.

Mrs. Lawrence listened to him with a mind more disengaged, and a
flitting disapproval of Aminta's unsympathetic ear, or reluctance to
stimulate the devout attention a bruised warrior should have in his
tent. She did not press on him the post of umpire. He consented--at her
request, he said--to visit the show; but refused any official position
that would, it was clearly enough implied, bring his name in any
capacity whatever before the country which had unpardonably maltreated
him.

Feminine wits will be set working, when a point has been gained; and as
Mrs. Lawrence could now say she had persuaded Lord Ormont to gratify
her specially, she warmed to fancy she read him, and that she might have
managed the wounded and angry giant. Her minor intelligence, caracoling
unhampered by harassing emotions, rebuked Aminta's for not perceiving
that to win him round to whatever a woman may desire, she must be with
him, outstrip him even, along the line he chooses for himself; abuse
the country, rail at the Government, ridicule the title of English Army,
proscribe the name of India in his hearing. Little stings of jealousy
are small insect bites, and do not pique a wounded giant hardly
sensible of irritation under his huge, and as we assume for our purpose,
justifiable wrath. We have to speculate which way does the giant incline
to go? and turn him according to the indication.

Mrs. Lawrence was driven by her critic mood to think Aminta
relied--erroneously, after woman's old fashion--on the might of superb
dark eyes after havin