THE CASE OF GENERAL OPLE AND LADY CAMPER

By George Meredith

CHAPTER I

An excursion beyond the immediate suburbs of London, projected long
before his pony-carriage was hired to conduct him, in fact ever since his
retirement from active service, led General Ople across a famous common,
with which he fell in love at once, to a lofty highway along the borders
of a park, for which he promptly exchanged his heart, and so gradually
within a stone's-throw or so of the river-side, where he determined not
solely to bestow his affections but to settle for life. It may be seen
that he was of an adventurous temperament, though he had thought fit to
loosen his sword-belt. The pony-carriage, however, had been hired for
the very special purpose of helping him to pass in review the lines of
what he called country houses, cottages, or even sites for building, not
too remote from sweet London: and as when Coelebs goes forth intending to
pursue and obtain, there is no doubt of his bringing home a wife, the
circumstance that there stood a house to let, in an airy situation, at a
certain distance in hail of the metropolis he worshipped, was enough to
kindle the General's enthusiasm. He would have taken the first he saw,
had it not been for his daughter, who accompanied him, and at the age of
eighteen was about to undertake the management of his house. Fortune,
under Elizabeth Ople's guiding restraint, directed him to an epitome of
the comforts. The place he fell upon is only to be described in the
tongue of auctioneers, and for the first week after taking it he modestly
followed them by terming it bijou. In time, when his own imagination,
instigated by a state of something more than mere contentment, had been
at work on it, he chose the happy phrase, 'a gentlemanly residence.' For