little Selina of the inferiority of
the world of women to his Aminta; he thought of several, and splendid
women, foreign and English. The comparison rose sharply now, with
Aminta's novel, airy, homely, unchallengeing assumption of an equal
footing beside her lord, in looks and in tones that had cast off
constraint of the adoring handmaid, to show the full-blown woman,
rightful queen of her half of the dominion. Between the Aminta of then
and now, the difference was marked as between Northern and Southern
women: the frozen-mouthed Northerner and the pearl and rose-nipped
Southerner; those who smirk in dropping congealed monosyllables, and
those who radiantly laugh out the voluble chatter.

Conceiving this to the full in a mind destitute of imagery, but
indicative of the thing as clearly as the planed, unpolished woodwork
of a cabinet in a carpenter's shop, Lord Ormont liked her the better for
the change, though she was not the woman whose absence from his house
had caused him to go mooning half a night through the streets, and
though it forewarned him of a tougher bit of battle, if battle there was
to be.

He was a close reader of surfaces. But in truth, the change so notable
came of the circumstance, that some little way down below the surface he
perused, where heart weds mind, or nature joins intellect, for the two
to beget a resolution, the battle of the man and the woman had been
fought, and the man beaten.

CHAPTER XXII. TREATS OF THE FIRST DAY OF THE CONTENTION OF BROTHER AND
SISTER

In the contest rageing at mid-sea still between the man and the woman,
it is the one who is hard to the attractions of the other that will make
choice of the spot and have the advantages. A short time earlier Lord
Ormont could have marked it out at his leisure. He would have been
unable to comprehend why it was denied him to do so now; for he was
master of himself, untroubled by conscience, unaware, since he was
assured of his Aminta's perfect safety and his restored sense of
possession, that any taint of softness in him had reversed the condition
of their alliance. He felt benevolently the much he had to bestow, and
was about to bestow. Meanwhile, without complicity on his part, without
his knowledge, yet absolutely involving his fate, the battle had gone
against him in Aminta's breast.

Like many of his class and kind, he was thoroughly acquainted with the
physical woman, and he took that first and very engrossing volume