well. The modest position of the defensive negative was not to
her taste. The moment he presented himself she flew out upon some
yesterday's part of the argument and carried the war across the borders,
in attacks on his character and qualities--his weakness regarding women,
his incapacity to forgive, and the rest. She hammered on that head. As
for any prospect of a termination of the strife, he could see none in
her joyful welcome to him and regretful parting and pleased appointment
of the next meeting day after day.

The absurdest of her devices for winding him off his aim was to harp on
some new word she had got hold of as, for example, to point out to him
his aptitudes, compliment him on his aptitudes, recommend him to study
and learn the limitations of his aptitudes! She revelled in something
the word unfolded to her.

However, here was the point: she had to be beaten. So, if she, too,
persisted in hammering, he must employ her female weapon of artifice
with her. One would gladly avoid the stooping to it in a civil dispute,
in which one is not so gloriously absolved for lying and entrapping as
in splendid war.

Weyburn's name was announced to him at an early hour on Thursday
morning. My lord nodded to the footman; he nodded to himself over a
suggestion started in a tactical intelligence by the name.

'Ah! you 're off?' he accosted the young man.

'I have come to take my leave, my lord.'

'Nothing new in the morning papers?'

'A report that Captain May intends to return and surrender.'

'Not before a month has passed, if he follows my counsel.'

'To defend his character.'

'He has none.'

'His reputation.'

'He has too much.'

'These charges against him must be intolerable.'

'Was he not a bit of a pupil of yours?'

'We practised two or three times-nothing more.'

'Morsfield was a wasp at a feast. Somebody had to crush him. I 've seen
the kind of man twice in my life and exactly the kind of man. If their
law puts down duelling, he rules the kingdom!'

'My lord, I should venture to say the kind of man can be a common
annoyance because the breach of the law is countenanced.'

'Bad laws are best broken. A society that can't get a scouring now and
then will be a dirty set.'

With a bend of the head, in apology for speaking of himself, Weyburn
said: 'I have acted on my view. I declined a challenge from a sort of
henchman of his.'

'Oh! a poacher's lurcher? You did right. Fight such fellows with