The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper | Page 7

to go out alone.'
'I can trust her.'
'Girls!'

'She has the spirit of a man.'
'That is well. She has a spirit; it will be tried.'
The General modestly furnished an instance or two of her spiritedness.
Lady Camper seemed to like this theme; she looked graciously
interested.
'Still, you should not suffer her to go out alone,' she said.
'I place implicit confidence in her,' said the General; and Lady Camper
gave it up.
She proposed to walk down the lanes to the river-side, to meet
Elizabeth returning.
The General manifested alacrity checked by reluctance. Lady Camper
had told him she objected to sit in a strange room by herself; after that,
he could hardly leave her to dash upstairs to change his clothes; yet
how, attired as he was, in a fatigue jacket, that warned him not to
imagine his back view, and held him constantly a little to the rear of
Lady Camper, lest she should be troubled by it;--and he knew the habit
of the second rank to criticise the front--how consent to face the outer
world in such style side by side with the lady he admired?
'Come,' said she; and he shot forward a step, looking as if he had
missed fire.
'Are you not coming, General?'
He advanced mechanically.
Not a soul met them down the lanes, except a little one, to whom Lady
Camper gave a small silver-piece, because she was a picture.
The act of charity sank into the General's heart, as any pretty
performance will do upon a warm waxen bed.

Lady Camper surprised him by answering his thoughts. 'No; it's for my
own pleasure.'
Presently she said, 'Here they are.'
General Ople beheld his daughter by the river-side at the end of the
lane, under escort of Mr. Reginald Rolles.
It was another picture, and a pleasing one. The young lady and the
young gentleman wore boating hats, and were both dressed in white,
and standing by or just turning from the outrigger and light skiff they
were about to leave in charge of a waterman. Elizabeth stretched a
finger at arm's- length, issuing directions, which Mr. Rolles took up and
worded further to the man, for the sake of emphasis; and he, rather than
Elizabeth, was guilty of the half-start at sight of the persons who were
approaching.
'My nephew, you should know, is intended for a working soldier,' said
Lady Camper; 'I like that sort of soldier best.'
General Ople drooped his shoulders at the personal compliment.
She resumed. 'His pay is a matter of importance to him. You are aware
of the smallness of a subaltern's pay.
'I,' said the General, 'I say I feel my poor half-pay, having always been
a working soldier myself, very important, I was saying, very important
to me!'
'Why did you retire?'
Her interest in him seemed promising. He replied conscientiously,
'Beyond the duties of General of Brigade, I could not, I say I could not,
dare to aspire; I can accept and execute orders; I shrink from
responsibility!'
'It is a pity,' said she, 'that you were not, like my nephew Reginald,
entirely dependent on your profession.'

She laid such stress on her remark, that the General, who had just
expressed a very modest estimate of his abilities, was unable to reject
the flattery of her assuming him to be a man of some fortune. He
coughed, and said, 'Very little.' The thought came to him that he might
have to make a statement to her in time, and he emphasized, 'Very little
indeed. Sufficient,' he assured her, 'for a gentlemanly appearance.'
'I have given you your warning,' was her inscrutable rejoinder, uttered
within earshot of the young people, to whom, especially to Elizabeth,
she was gracious. The damsel's boating uniform was praised, and her
sunny flush of exercise and exposure.
Lady Camper regretted that she could not abandon her parasol: 'I
freckle so easily.'
The General, puzzling over her strange words about a warning, gazed at
the red rose of art on her cheek with an air of profound abstraction.
'I freckle so easily,' she repeated, dropping her parasol to defend her
face from the calculating scrutiny.
'I burn brown,' said Elizabeth.
Lady Camper laid the bud of a Falcot rose against the young girl's
cheek, but fetched streams of colour, that overwhelmed the momentary
comparison of the sunswarthed skin with the rich dusky yellow of the
rose in its deepening inward to soft brown.
Reginald stretched his hand for the privileged flower, and she let him
take it; then she looked at the General; but the General was looking,
with his usual air of satisfaction, nowhere.

CHAPTER III
'Lady Camper is no common enigma,' General Ople observed to his
daughter.

Elizabeth inclined to be pleased with her, for at