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 having been captured.  It seemed to her worse than a beautiful woman’s vanity, a childishness.  But her boy’s head held boy’s brains; and Lord Ormont’s praise of the splendid creature’s nerve when she had to smell powder in Spain, and at bull-fights, and once at a wrecking of their carriage down a gully on the road over the Alpujarras, sent her away subdued, envious, happy to have kissed the cheek of the woman who could inspire it.

CHAPTER IX.

A FLASH OF THE BRUISED WARRIOR

The winning of Lord Ormont’s consent to look on at the little bout of arms was counted an achievement; for even in his own rarefied upper circle, where the fervid sentiments are not allowed to be seen plunging, he had his troop of enthusiasts; and they were anxious that he should make an appearance in public, to take what consolation a misunderstood and injured man could get from evidence of the grateful esteem entertained for him by a party of his countrymen, who might reasonably expect at the same time to set eyes, at rather close quarters, on the wonderful dark beauty, supposed a Spaniard, occasionally beheld riding beside him.  If it is possible to connect a woman with the devoutest of their anticipations, the sons of leisure up there will do it.  But, in truth, an English world was having cause to ransack the dust-heaps for neglected men of mettle.  Our intermittent ague, known as dread of invasion, was over the land.  Twice down the columns of panic newspaper correspondence Lord Ormont saw his name cited, with the effect on him that such signs of national repentance approaching lodged a crabbed sourness in his consulting-room, whether of head or breast.