Utterly impossible! You trifle with me.'

'We will talk when we are free of this accompaniment of carriage-wheels,
General,' said Lady Camper.

'I will beg permission to go and fetch Elizabeth, madam.'

'Rightly thought of. Fetch her in my carriage. And, by the way, Mrs.
Baerens was my old music-mistress, and is, I think, one year older than
I. She can tell you on which side of seventy I am.'

'I shall not require to ask, my lady,' he said, sighing.

'Then we will send the carriage for Elizabeth, and have it out together
at once. I am impatient; yes, General, impatient: for what?--
forgiveness.'

'Of me, my lady?' The General breathed profoundly.

'Of whom else? Do you know what it is?-I don't think you do. You
English have the smallest experience of humanity. I mean this: to strike
so hard that, in the end, you soften your heart to the victim. Well,
that is my weakness. And we of our blood put no restraint on the blows
we strike when we think them wanted, so we are always overdoing it.'

General Ople assisted Lady Camper to alight from the carriage, which was
forthwith despatched for Elizabeth.

He prepared to listen to her with a disconnected smile of acute
attentiveness.