English lady of that sort to rough it on the Leura.'

'Well, why not? Do you want your wife to be like a canary in a cage?'

'You know I don't hold with gilded cages and spoiling a woman who is
there to be your mate. But all the same, I shan't look out for MY wife
until I can afford to give her as good a show as she'd be likely to
have if the stopped at home. You see, a real woman must be a sportsman
in her way of taking life as much as a man, and I maintain as a general
proposition that it's the English lady--even one of your sneered-at
"Lady Clara Vere de Vere" lot who makes the best front against battle,
murder, and sudden death--if it has to come to that. . . . Just
because,' he went on, 'though she might have been brought up in a
castle and never have done a hand's turn that could be done for her,
she's still got in her veins the blood of fighting ancestors--men who
were ready to lay down their lives for God and King and country and
their women's honour--and of women too who'd maybe held the stronghold
that had been their husband's reward, and kept the flag flying, when to
fail or flinch meant death or worse. . . . Why, look at your Lady
Nithisdales and your Lady Russells and your Maria Theresas. . . .'

'And your Joan of Arc--who was a peasant girl--and your Charlotte
Corday. . . .'

'Oh, you beat me there. . . . And I wasn't intending to fire off a
speech anyway. . . . And anyway, Joan, its awful cheek to think I could
ever get the sort of wife I want, but if I can't, I won't have one at
all. . . . I'll have my money's worth. Romance--Ideals--something
more LIFTING than beef and mutton and cutting a bigger dash than your
neighbour. . . . See?'