the difference!

And consider that this woman is about to be one's wife! He could have
believed (if he had not known full surely that such things are not) he
was in the hands of a witch.

Lady Camper's 'adieu' was perfectly beautiful--a kind, cordial, intimate,
above all, to satisfy his present craving, it was a lady-like adieu--the
adieu of a delicate and elegant woman, who had hardly left her anchorage
by forty to sail into the fifties.

Alas! he had her word for it, that she was not less than seventy. And,
worse, she had betrayed most melancholy signs of sourness and agedness
as soon as he had sworn himself to her fast and fixed.

'The road is open to you to retreat,' were her last words.

'My road,' he answered gallantly, 'is forward.'

He was drawing backward as he said it, and something provoked her to
smile.




CHAPTER V

It is a noble thing to say that your road is forward, and it befits a man
of battles. General Ople was too loyal a gentleman to think of any other
road. Still, albeit not gifted with imagination, he could not avoid the