The absurdest of her devices for winding him off his aim was to harp on some new word she had got hold of as, for example, to point out to him his aptitudes, compliment him on his aptitudes, recommend him to study and learn the limitations of his aptitudes! She revelled in something the word unfolded to her. However, here was the point: she had to be beaten. So, if she, too, persisted in hammering, he must employ her female weapon of artifice with her. One would gladly avoid the stooping to it in a civil dispute, in which one is not so gloriously absolved for lying and entrapping as in splendid war. Weyburn's name was announced to him at an early hour on Thursday morning. My lord nodded to the footman; he nodded to himself over a suggestion started in a tactical intelligence by the name. 'Ah! you 're off?' he accosted the young man. 'I have come to take my leave, my lord.' 'Nothing new in the morning papers?' 'A report that Captain May intends to return and surrender.' 'Not before a month has passed, if he follows my counsel.' 'To defend his character.' 'He has none.' 'His reputation.' 'He has too much.' 'These charges against him must be intolerable.' 'Was he not a bit of a pupil of yours?' 'We practised two or three times-nothing more.' 'Morsfield was a wasp at a feast. Somebody had to crush him. I 've seen the kind of man twice in my life and exactly the kind of man. If their law puts down duelling, he rules the kingdom!' 'My lord, I should venture to say the kind of man can be a common annoyance because the breach of the law is countenanced.' 'Bad laws are best broken. A society that can't get a scouring now and then will be a dirty set.' With a bend of the head, in apology for speaking of himself, Weyburn said: 'I have acted on my view. I declined a challenge from a sort of henchman of his.' 'Oh! a poacher's lurcher? You did right. Fight such fellows with constables. You have seen Lady Charlotte?' 'I am on my way to her ladyship.' 'Do me this favour. Fourteen doors up the street of her residence, my physician lives. I have to consult him at once. Dr. Rewkes.' Weyburn bowed. Lady Charlotte could not receive him later than half-past ten of the morning, he said. 'This morning she can,' said my lord. 'You will tell Dr. Rewkes that it is immediate. I rather regret your going. I shall be in a controversy with the Horse Guards about our cavalry saddles. It would be regiments of raw backs the first fortnight of a campaign.' The earl discoursed on saddles; and passed to high eulogy of our Hanoverian auxiliary troopers in the Peninsula; 'good husbands,' he named them quaintly, speaking of their management of their beasts. Thence he diverged to Frederic's cavalry, rarely matched for shrewdness and endurance; to the deeds of the Liechtenstein Hussars; to the great things Blucher did with his horsemen.