Lady Charlotte Eglett appeared. Hers was the brother, the Lord Ormont we know, a general of cavalry not a doubt, all sabretache, spurs and plumes, dashing away into a Hindoo desert like the soldier he is, a born man sword in fist. She wrote, "Come to me. He is said to be married."
He spoke to her. "My father was a soldier."
"He too?" she interposed.
Their eyes clashed.
"You are the tutor for me," she added.
"For your grandson," corrected he.
It was a bargain. They struck it. She glanced right and left, showing the town-bred tutor her hedges at the canter along the main road of her scheme.
His admiration of the cavalry-brother rose to a fever-point. Not good with the pen, Lady Charlotte opined; hard to beat at a sword-thrust, thought Matey. "Be his pen-holder," put in the lady. "I would," said he, smiling again. She split sides, convulsed in a take-offish murmur, a roll here, a roll there, rib-tickling with eyes goggling on the forefront of a sentence all rags, tags, and splutters like a jerry-builder gaping at a waste land pegged out in plots, foundations on the dig, and auctioneer prowling hither thither, hammer ready for the "gone" which shall spin a nobody's land into a somebody's money passing over counter or otherwise pocket to pocket, full to empty or almost empty, with a mowling choke-spark of a batter-foot all quills for the bean-feast. So they understood it.
Matey then was Lord Ormont's secretary. A sad dog his Lordship; all the women on bended knees to his glory. Who shall own him? What cares he so it be a petticoat? For women go the helter-skelter pace; head-first they plunge or kick like barking cuckoos. You can tether them with a dab for Sir Francis Jeune. He will charge a jury to the right-about of a crapulous fallow-ball, stiff as Rhadamanthus eyeing the tremblers. But Matey had met this one before. Memories came pouring. He gazed. Was she, in truth, Lord Ormont's? The thought spanked him in the face. A wife? Possibly. And with an aunt—Aminta's aunt. She has a nose like a trout skimming a river for flies, then rises a minute and you not there, always too late with rod and line for sport. But there was danger to these two, and Lord Ormont was writing his Memoirs. A mad splashing of unnecessary ink on the foolscap made for his head, never more to wear the plumed cocked hat in a clash of thunder-bearing squadrons.