Orvonton

“ What is there to make us think that Ormont would marry? Impossible to imagine him intimidated. Unlikely that he, a practised reader of women, having so little of the woman in him, would be melted by a wily girl; as women in the twilight situation have often played the trick to come into the bright beams. How? They do a desperate thing, and call it generosity, and then they appeal from it to my lord's generosity; and so the two generosities drive off in a close carriage with a friend and a professional landlady for the blessing of the parson, and are legitimately united. ”

“ Against her will she was drawn to the young man, and her consciousness of it plucked her back to caution with occasional jerks—quaint alternations of the familiar and the harshly formal, in the stranger's experience.
“If I have your permission, Lady Charlotte,” said he, “the reason why I mount red a little—if I do it—is, you mention Lord Ormont, and I have followed his career since I was the youngest of boys.”
“Good to begin with the worship of a hero. He can't sham, can't deceive—not even a woman; and you're old enough to understand the temptation: they're so silly. ”

“ The lips of the fair woman could be seen to say that they were sweet when, laughing or discoursing, they gave sight of teeth proudly her own, rivalling the regularity of the grin of dentistry. A Venus of nature was melting into a Venus of art, and there was a decorous concealment of the contest and the anguish in the process, for which Lord Ormont liked her well enough to wink benevolently at her efforts to cheat the world at various issues, and maintain her duel with Time. The world deserved that she should beat it, even if she had been all deception. ”

“ Lady Follace has been taken seriously ill, and wants me."
Lord Ornington shrugged his shoulders. In another minute Lake was driven away in the carriage,
"Damn the man!" said Lord Ornington to himself as he paced up and down the verandah. "Who else would have—— 'Almost thou persuadest me ...' Damn him!"
A servant came on to the verandah to remove the coffee apparatus. "There is," said Lord Ornington, "a yellow-covered French book on the table under the plane-tree there. Kindly fetch it, and let me have a lamp here. Mr. Lake may be late to-night. I will wait up for him." ”

“ Wherever you bait, it is made known that you come from Olmer, and are one of us. That passes you on up to London. Where can Lord Ormont be now?'
'In Paris.'
'Still in Paris? He leaves her. She did well to send as she did. You will not pay for the posting along the road.'
'I will pay for myself—I have a 'purse,' Weyburn said; and continued, 'Oh, my lady; there is Mr. Hampton-Evey to-morrow morning: I promised to stand by him.'
'I'll explain,' said Lady Charlotte. 'He shall not miss you. If he strips the parson and comes as a man and a servant of the poor, he has nothing to fear. ”

“ Osborne was engaged. He held out his hand when I came up to him, and looked at me with a glance of pleased satisfaction, almost as if he were proud of me, which warmed my heart in spite of myself. I told my message, but he made no haste to obey it. He only nodded his head, with a smile, in answer to Mrs. Boulder’s urgent beckoning.
“Should you like to see him, Hester?” said Mr. Osborne, “there he is, that young dandy there, among all the young ladies—he prefers worshippers to critics, like a sensible man. Should you like to hear the great lion roar, Hester?” ”

“ Call on me in London or at Olmer—only mind and give me warning. I shall be glad to see you. I 've got some ideas from you. If I meet a man who helps me to read the world and men as they are, I 'm grateful to him; and most people are not, you 'll find. They want you to show them what they 'd like the world to be. We don't agree about a lady. You 're in the lists, lance in rest, all for chivalry. You 're a man, and a young man. Have you taken your leave of her yet? She'll expect it, as a proper compliment.'
'I propose running down to take my leave of Lady Ormont to-morrow,' replied Weyburn. ”

“ Lawrence Finchley's. I like to feel I can amuse them, as they do me. One puzzles for what they say—in somebody's absence, I mean. They must take Lord Ormont for a perfect sphinx; unless they are so silly as to think they may despise him, or suppose him indifferent. Oh, that upper class! It's a garden, and we can't help pushing to enter it; and fair flowers, indeed, but serpents too, like the tropics. It tries us more than anything else in the world—well, just as good eating tries the constitution. ”

“ You call her Lady Ormont: you are not one of the servants. Don't call her Lady Ormont to me.'
'It is her title, Lady Charlotte.' She let fly a broadside at him.
'You are one of the woman's dupes. I thought you had brains. How can you be the donkey not to see that my brother Rowsley, Lord Ormont, would never let a woman, lawfully bearing his name, go running the quadrille over London in couples with a Lady Staines and a Mrs. Lawrence Finchley, Lord Adderwood, and that man Morsfield, who boasts of your Lady Ormont, and does it unwhipped—tell me why? ”

“ He'll be hanging about you, and you won't escape him. Well, and my brother Rowsley: how is Lord Ormont? He never comes to me now, since—Well, it 's nothing to me; but I like to see my brother. She can't make any change here. Olmer and Lady Charlotte 's bosom were both implied. 'What do you think?—you 've noticed: is he in good health? It 's the last thing he 'll be got to speak of.'
Weyburn gave the proper assurances.
'Not he!' said she. 'He's never ill. Men beat women in the long race, if they haven't overdone it when young. ”

“ But her arms are open to the countess. It ought to be a grand step. You may be assured that Lady Charlotte Eglett would not be taken into them. My great-aunt has a great-aunt's memory. The Ormonts are the only explanation—if it 's an apology—she can offer for the behaviour of the husband of the Countess of Ormont. You know I like him. I can't help liking a man who likes me. Is that the way with a boy, Mr. Secretary? I must have another talk with the gentleman, my dear. You are Aminta to me.'
'Always Aminta to you,' was the reply, tenderly given. ”

“ But how strange, that a man of so abandoned a character should be the choice of a sister of Lord Orville! and how strange, that, almost at the moment of the union, he should be so importunate in gallantry to another woman! What a world is this we live in! how corrupt! how degenerate! well might I be contented to see no more of it! If I find that the eyes of Lord Orville agree with his pen,-I shall then think, that of all mankind, the only virtuous individual resides at Berry Hill. ”

“ They revelled in the devilish halo of skirts on the whirl encircling Lord Ormont's laurelled head.
That was a spark in their blood struck from a dislike of the tone assumed by Mr. Shalders to sustain his argument; with his “men are mortal,” and talk of a true living champion as “no chicken,” and the wordy drawl over “justification for calculating the approach of a close to a term of activity”—in the case of a proved hero! ”

“ But, then, Ormont had high principles with regard to the dues to his family. His principles could always be trusted. The dangerous young person would have to be a person of lineage, of a certain station at least: no need for a titled woman, only for warranted good blood. Is that to be found certificated out of the rolls of Society? It may just possibly be found, without certificate, however, in those muddled caverns where the excluded intermingle. Here and there, in a peasant family, or a small country tradesman's just raised above a peasant, honest regenerating blood will be found. ”

“ Morsfield—don't you see?—he has thrown them together. It is Lord Ormont's wicked conspiracy to rid himself of her. A secretary! He'll beat any one alive in plots. She can't show her face in London after this, if you don't overtake her. And she might have seen Lord Ormont's plot to ruin her. He tired of her, and was ashamed of her inferior birth to his own, after the first year, except on the Continent, where she had her rights. Me he never forgave for helping make him the happy man he might have been in spite of his age. ”

“ Arthur Abner had his next adieu. They talked of Lady Ormont, as to whose position of rightful Countess of Ormont Mr. Abner had no doubt. He said of Lady Charlotte: 'She has a clear head; but she loves her “brother Rowsley” excessively; and any excess pushes to craziness.'
He spoke to Weyburn of his prospects in the usually, perhaps necessarily, cheerless tone of men who recognize by contrast the one mouse's nibbling at a mountain of evil. 'To harmonize the nationalities, my dear boy! teach Christians to look fraternally on Jews! ”

“ Leek—"for his services in a certain duel you've heard of; but I hadn't got it with me in Boulogne; and, besides, he has a handsome gold watch of his own. So then I determined to keep it for the winner of the Orville; and I've brought it. It seems consistent with poetical justice that it should be Talbot's at last, since he was the one damaged by the shots. Long life to you, my brave earl, to wear it out!"
"Not to me, sir," said the earl, flushing with delight, but just and generous in the midst of it. "It is true I have got the Orville, but Paradyne merited it. ”

“ For if one is nervously on guard to not-see, the matter starts up winged, and enters us, and kindles the mind, and tingles through the blood; it has us as a foe. The art of blind vision requires not only practice, but an intimate knowledge of the arts of the traitor we carry within. Safest for him, after all, was to lay fast hold of the particularly unimportant person he was, both there and anywhere else. The Countess of Ormont's manner toward him was to be read as a standing index of the course he should follow; and he thanked her. He could not quite so sincerely thank her aunt. ”

“ Not so very many men are earnest. She called to recollection how ludicrously practical he was in the thick of his passion. His third letter (addressed to the Countess of Ormont—whom he manifestly did not or would not take to be the veritable Countess—and there was much to plead for his error) , or was it his fourth?—the letters were a tropical hail-storm: third or fourth, he broke off a streaked thunderpeal, to capitulate his worldly possessions, give the names and degrees of kinship of his relatives, the exact amount of the rent-roll of his Yorkshire estates, of his funded property. ”

“ Expects to have to fight them all the same. He loves his country best. Here's the man everybody's abusing!”
“I demur, my lady. I was dining the other day with a client of mine, and a youngster was present who spoke of Lord Ormont in a way I should like you to have heard. He seemed to know the whole of Lord Ormont's career, from the time of the ride to Paraguay up to the capture of the plotting Rajah. He carried the table.”
“Good boy! We must turn to the boys for justice, then. Name your day for this man, this editor.” ”

“ She sprang on her seat for a horse beneath her, and said, 'But this is healthy excitement,' as in reply to her London physician's remonstrances. 'And there's my brother Rowsley, talking to one of the keepers,' she cried. 'You see Lord Ormont? I can see a mile. Sight doesn't fail with me. He 's insisting. 'Ware poachers when Rowsley's on his ground! You smell the air here? Nobody dies round about Steignton. Their legs wear out and they lie down to rest them. It 's the finest air in the world. ”

“ Mr. Jebb, made acquainted with the cabal in the quadrangle, had carried the grievance to the Head Master, and the candidates were called into the study, Paradyne excepted. Gall, who had come back, made one of them. Sir Simon Orville was sitting with the Master—which was unexpected. The question to be decided was this: was Paradyne, with his burden of inherited disgrace, to be allowed to compete for the Orville with themselves, who had no such inheritance, and repudiated all possibility of disgrace on their own score, present and future, and for their forefathers in the past. ”

“ I've met him at the fencing-rooms. He 's one of the violent fencers, good for making his point, if one funks an attack.'
'That man Morsfield, is it? I wonder what he's doing on the road here. He goes over London boasting—hum, nothing to me. But he 'll find Lord Ormont's arm can protect a poor woman, whatever she is. He'd have had it before, only Lord Ormont shuns a scandal. I was telling you, my Olmer doctor forbade horse-riding, and my husband raised a noise like one of my turkeycocks on the wing ”

“ The street was a banishment and a relief when Weyburn's first interview with Lord Ormont was over.
He rejoiced to tell his previous anticipations that he had not been disappointed; and he bade hero-worshippers expect no gilded figure. We gather heroes as we go, if we are among the growing: our constancy is shown in the not discarding of our old ones. He held to his earlier hero, though he had seen him, and though he could fancy he saw round him. ”

“ The boys called it familiarly the Orville Prize; in short, the Orville. The names had been just put down, several, for the probationary twelvemonth was on the eve of being entered; and, to the unspeakable indignation of the school, George Paradyne's was one. A new boy (leaving other things that some two or three of them knew of out of the question) who had but just come in, to thrust down his name indecently amidst the old pupils! This was said from mouth to mouth; and Trace had a sore battle with himself not to disclose the disgrace of the past. ”