"Look," said the general to Sir Oswald, "that picture surpasses anything you have on your walls."
Sir Oswald bowed.
"What a beautiful girl your niece is!" the old soldier continued. "See how her face resembles this of Lady Edelgitha Darrell. Pray do not think me impertinent, but I cannot imagine, old friend, why you married, so devoted to bachelor life as you were, when you had a niece so beautiful, so true a Darrell, for your heiress. I am puzzled now that I see her."
"She lacked training," said Sir Oswald.
"Training?" repeated the general, contemptuously. "What do you call training? Do you mean that she was not experienced in all the little trifling details of a dinner-table—that she could not smile as she told graceful little untruths? Training! Why, that girl is a queen among women; a noble soul shines in her grand face, there is a royal grandeur of nature about her that training could never give. I have lived long, but I have never seen such a woman."
"She had such strange, out-of-the-way, unreal notions, I dared not—that is the truth—I dared not leave Darrell Court to her."
"I hope you have acted wisely," said the general; "but, as an old friend and a true one, I must say that I doubt it."
"My wife, I am happy to say, has plenty of common sense," observed Sir Oswald.
"Your wife," returned the general, looking at the sheen of the golden hair and the shining dress, "is pretty, graceful, and amiable, but that girl has all the soul; there is as much difference between them as between a golden buttercup and a dark, stately, queenly rose. The rose should have been ruler at Darrell Court, old friend."
Then he asked, abruptly: