This is hopeful indeed. Nor need we wonder that our best magazines are reflecting the same tendency.
Here for instance are the opening sentences of a very typical serial now running in one of our best periodicals: for all I know the rest of the sentences may be like them. At any rate, any magazine reader will recognize them at once:
BONNE MERE PITOU
A Conte of Old Normandy
Bonne Mere Pitou sat spinning beside the porte of the humble chaumiere in which she dwelt. From time to time her eyes looked up and down the gran' route that passed her door.
"Il ne vient pas," she murmured (he does not come).
She rose wearily and went dedans. Presently she came out again, dehors. "Il ne vient toujours pas," she sighed (he still does not come).
About her in the tall trees of the allee the percherons twittered while the soft roucoulement of the bees murmured drowsily in the tall calice of the chou-fleur.
"Il n'est pas venu," she said (perfect tense, third singular, he is not, or has not, come).
Can we blame him if he didn't? No doubt he was still studying his active verb before tackling Mere Pitou.
But there! Let it pass. In any case it is not only the magazines, but the novels themselves, that are being transformed by the war. Witness this:
BY ONE OF OUR MOST POPULAR NOVELISTS
"It was in the summer house, at the foot of the old garden, that the awaited declaration came. Edwin kneeled at Angelina's feet. At last they were alone! The successful barrage of conversation which he had put up at breakfast had compelled her mother to remain in her trenches, and had driven her father to the shelter of his dug-out. Her younger brother he had camouflaged with the present of a new fishing rod, thus inducing him to retire to the river. The communications with the servants had been cut. Of the strict neutrality of the gardener he was already assured. Edwin felt that the moment had come for going over the top. Yet being an able strategist, he was anxious not to attempt to advance on too wide a front.
"Angelina!" he exclaimed, raising himself to one knee with his hands outstretched toward her. The girl started as at the sound of an air bomb; for a moment she elevated her eyes and looked him full in the tangent, then she lowered them again but continued to observe him through her mental periscope.
"Angelina," he repeated, "I have a declaration to make."
"As from what date?" she questioned quietly. Edwin drew his watch from his pocket.
"As from this morning, at ten-forty-six," he said. Then, emboldened by her passive attitude, he continued with rising passion in his tone.
"Ever since I first met you I have felt that I could not live without you. I am a changed man. My calibre is altered. I feel ten centimeters wider in the mouth than I did six weeks ago. I feel that my path is altered. I have a new range and an angle of elevation such as I never experienced before. I have hidden my love as best I could till now. I have worn a moral gas-mask before your family. I can do so no longer. Angelina, will you be mine, forming with me a single unit, drawing our rations from the same field kitchen and occupying the same divisional headquarters?"
The girl seemed to hesitate. She raised her eyes to his.
"We know one another so little," she murmured.
Edwin felt that his offensive was failing. He therefore hastened to bring up his means of support.
"I have an ample income of my own," he pleaded.
Angelina raised her eyes again. It was evident that she was about to surrender. But at this moment her mother's voice was heard calling, "Angelina, Angelina, my dear, where are you?"
The barrage had broken down.
"Quick," said the girl, "mobilize yourself. Pick up that tennis racket and let us hurry to the court and dig ourselves in."
"But my declaration," urged Edwin eagerly.
"Accepted," she said, "as from eleven-two this morning."
V.—Other Impossibilities
1.—The Art of Conversation
I—HOW TO INTRODUCE TWO PEOPLE TO ONE ANOTHER
Nothing is more important in introducing two people to each other than to employ a fitting form of words. The more usually recognized forms are easily learned and committed to memory and may be utilized as occasion requires. I pass over such rudimentary formulas as "Ed, shake hands with Jim Taylor," or, "Boys, this is Pete, the new hand; Pete, get hold of the end of that cant-hook." In fact, we are speaking only of polite society as graced by the fair sex, the only kind that we need care about.
The Third Avenue Procedure
A very neat and convenient form is that in vogue in Third Avenue circles, New York, as, for instance, at a fifty-cents-a-head dance (ladies free) in the hall of the Royal Knights of Benevolence.
"Miss Summerside, meet Mr. O'Hara," after which Miss Summerside says very distinctly, "Mr. O'Hara," and Mr. O'Hara says with equal clearness "Miss Summerside." In this circle a mark of exquisite breeding is found in the request to have the name repeated. "I don't quite catch the name!" says Mr. O'Hara critically; then he catches it and repeats it—"Miss Summerside."
"Catching the name" is a necessary part of this social encounter. If not caught the first time it must be put over again. The peculiar merit of this introduction is that it lets Miss Summerside understand clearly that Mr. O'Hara never heard of her before. That helps to keep her in her place.
In superior circles, however, introduction becomes more elaborate, more flattering, more unctuous. It reaches its acme in what everyone recognizes at once as
The Clerical Method
This is what would be instinctively used in Anglican circles—as, for example, by the Episcopal Bishop of Boof in introducing a Canon of the Church to one of the "lady workers" of the congregation (meaning a lady too rich to work) who is expected to endow a crib in the Diocesan Home for Episcopal Cripples. A certain quantity of soul has to be infused into this introduction. Anybody who has ever heard it can fill in the proper accentuation, which must be very rich and deep.
"Oh, Mrs. Putitover, MAY I introduce my very dear old friend, Canon Cutitout? The Canon, Mrs. Putitover, is one of my DEAREST friends. Mrs. Putitover, my dear Canon, is quite one of our most enthusiastic workers."
After which outburst of soul the Bishop is able to add,
"Will you excuse me, I'm afraid I simply MUST run."
Personally, I have never known or met a Bishop in society in any other situation than just about to run. Where they run to, I do not know. But I think I understand what they run from.
The Lounge Room of the Club
Equally high in the social scale but done quite differently is the Club Introduction. It is done by a club man who, for the life of him, can't remember the names of either of the two club men whom he is introducing, and who each, for the life of him, can't think of the name of the man they are being introduced by. It runs—
"Oh, I say, I beg your pardon—I thought, of course, you two fellows knew one another perfectly well—let me introduce—urr–wurr–"
Later on, after three whiskey-and-sodas, each of the three finds out the names of the other two, surreptitiously from the hall porter. But it makes no difference. They forget them again anyway. Now let us move up higher, in fact, very high. Let us approach the real thing.
Introduction to H.E. the Viceroy of India, K.C.B.,
K.C.S.I., S.O.S.
The most exalted form of introduction is seen in the presentation of Mr. Tomkins, American tourist, to H.E. the Viceroy of India. An aide-de-camp in uniform at the foot of a grand staircase shouts, "Mr. Tomkins!" An aide-de-camp at the top (one minute later) calls "Mr. Thompson"; another aide, four feet further on, calls "Mr. Torps."
Then a military secretary, standing close to His Excellency, takes Mr. Tomkins by the neck and bends him down toward the floor and says very clearly and distinctly, "Mr. Torpentine." Then he throws him out by the neck into the crowd beyond and calls for another. The thing is done. Mr. Tomkins wipes the perspiration from his hair with his handkerchief and goes back at full speed to the Hoogli Hotel, Calcutta, eager for stationery to write at once to Ohio and say that he knows the Viceroy.
The Office Introduction, One-sided
This introduction comes into our office, slipping past whoever keeps the door with a packet of books under its arm. It says—
"Ledd me introduze myself. The book proposition vidge I am introduzing is one vidge ve are now pudding on the market…"
Then, of two things, one—
Either a crash of glass is heard as the speaker is hurled through the skylight, or he walks out twenty minutes later, bowing profusely as he goes, and leaving us gazing in remorse at a signed document entitling us to receive the "Masterpieces of American Poetry" in sixty volumes.
On the Stage
Everything on the stage is done far better than in real life. This is true of introductions. There is a warmth, a soul, in the stage introduction not known in the chilly atmosphere of everyday society. Let me quote as an example of a stage introduction the formula used, in the best melodramatic art, in the kitchen-living-room (stove right centre) of the New England farm.
"Neighbour Jephson's son, this is my little gal, as good and sweet a little gal, as mindful of her old father, as you'll find in all New England. Neighbour Jephson's son, she's been my all in all to me, this little gal, since I laid her mother in the ground five Christmases ago—" The speaker is slightly overcome and leans against a cardboard clock for strength: he recovers and goes on—"Hope, this is Neighbour Jephson's son, new back from over the seas, as fine a lad, gal, if he's like the folk that went before him, as ever followed the sea. Hope, your hand. My boy, your hand. See to his comfort, Hope, while I go and read the Good Book a spell in the barnyard."
The Indian Formula
Many people, tired of the empty phrases of society, look back wistfully to the simple direct speech of savage life. Such persons will find useful the usual form of introduction (the shorter form) prevalent among our North American Indians (at least as gathered from the best literary model):
"Friends and comrades who are worthy,
See and look with all your eyesight,
Listen with your sense of hearing,
Gather with your apprehension—
Bow your heads, O trees, and hearken.
Hush thy rustling, corn, and listen;
Turn thine ear and give attention;
Ripples of the running water,
Pause a moment in your channels—
Here I bring you,—Hiawatha."
The last line of this can be changed to suit the particular case. It can just as easily read, at the end, "Here is Henry Edward Eastwood," or, "Here is Hal McGiverin, Junior," or anything else. All names fit the sense. That, in fact, was the wonderful art of Longfellow—the sense being independent of the words.
The Platform Introduction
Here is a form of introduction cruelly familiar to those who know it. It is used by the sour-looking villain facetiously called in newspaper reports the "genial chairman" of the meeting. While he is saying it the victim in his little chair on the platform is a target for the eyes of a thousand people who are wondering why he wears odd socks.
"The next speaker, ladies and gentlemen, is one who needs no introduction to this gathering. His name" (here the chairman consults a little card) "is one that has become a household word. His achievements in" (here the chairman looks at his card again, studies it, turns it upside down and adds) "in many directions are familiar to all of you." There is a feeble attempt at applause and the chairman then lifts his hand and says in a plain business-like tone—"Will those of the audience who are leaving kindly step as lightly as possible." He is about to sit down, but then adds as a pleasant afterthought for the speaker to brood over—"I may say, while I am on my feet, that next week our society is to have a REAL treat in hearing—et cetera and so forth—"
II—HOW TO OPEN A CONVERSATION
After the ceremony of introduction is completed the next thing to consider is the proper way to open a conversation. The beginning of conversation is really the hardest part. It is the social equivalent to "going over the top." It may best be studied in the setting and surroundings of the Evening Reception, where people stand upright and agonise, balancing a dish of ice-cream. Here conversation reaches its highest pitch of social importance. One must talk or die. Something may be done to stave it off a little by vigorous eating. But the food at such affairs is limited. There comes a point when it is absolutely necessary to say something.
The beginning, as I say, is the hardest problem. Other communities solve it better than we do.
The Chinese System
In China conversation, between strangers after introduction, is always opened by the question, "And how old are YOU?" This strikes me as singularly apt and sensible. Here is the one thing that is common ground between any two people, high or low, rich or poor—how far are you on your pilgrimage in life?
The Penetentiary Method
Compare with the Chinese method the grim, but very significant formula that is employed (I believe it is a literal fact) in the exercise yards of the American penitentiaries. "What have YOU brought?" asks the San Quentin or Sing Sing convict of the new arrival, meaning, "And how long is your sentence?" There is the same human touch about this, the same common ground of interest, as in the Chinese formula.
Polite Society
But in our polite society we have as yet found no better method than beginning with a sort of medical diagnosis—"How do you do?" This admits of no answer. Convention forbids us to reply in detail that we are feeling if anything slightly lower than last week, but that though our temperature has risen from ninety-one-fifty to ninety-one-seventy-five, our respiration is still normal.
Still worse is the weather as an opening topic. For it either begins and ends as abruptly as the medical diagnosis, or it leads the two talkers on into a long and miserable discussion of the weather of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, of last month, of last year and the last fifty years.
Let one beware, however, of a conversation that begins too easily.
The Mutual Friends' Opening
This can be seen at any evening reception, as when the hostess introduces two people who are supposed to have some special link to unite them at once with an instantaneous snap, as when, for instance, they both come from the same town.
"Let me introduce Mr. Sedley," said the hostess. "I think you and Mr. Sedley are from the same town, Miss Smiles. Miss Smiles, Mr. Sedley."
Off they go at a gallop. "I'm so delighted to meet you," says Mr. Sedley. "It's good to hear from anybody who comes from our little town." (If he's a rollicking humourist, Mr. Sedley calls it his little old "burg.")
"Oh, yes," answers Miss Smiles. "I'm from Winnipeg too.
I was so anxious to meet you to ask if you knew the
McGowans. They're my greatest friends at home."
"The—who?" asks Mr. Sedley.
"The McGowans—on Selkirk Avenue."
"No-o, I don't think I do. I know the Prices on Selkirk
Avenue. Of course you know them."
"The Prices? No, I don't believe I do—I don't think I ever heard of the Prices. You don't mean the Pearsons? I know them very well."
"No, I don't know the Pearsons. The Prices live just near the reservoir."
"No, then I'm sure I don't know them. The Pearsons live close to the college."
"Close to the College? Is it near the William Kennedys?"
"I don't think I know the William Kennedys."
This is the way the conversation goes on for ten minutes.
Both Mr. Sedley and Miss Smiles are getting desperate.
Their faces are fixed. Their sentences are reduced to—
"Do you know the Petersons?"
"No. Do you know the Appleby's?"
"No. Do you know the Willie Johnsons?"
"No."
Then at last comes a rift in the clouds. One of them happens to mention Beverley Dixon. The other is able to cry exultingly—
"Beverley Dixon? Oh, yes, rather. At least, I don't KNOW him, but I used often to hear the Applebys speak of him."
And the other exclaims with equal delight—
"I don't know him very well either, but I used to hear the Willie Johnsons talk about him all the time."
They are saved.
Half an hour after they are still standing there talking of Beverly Dixon.
The Etiquette Book
Personally I have suffered so much from inability to begin a conversation that not long ago I took the extreme step of buying a book on the subject. I regret to say that I got but little light or help from it. It was written by the Comtesse de Z—. According to the preface the Comtesse had "moved in the highest circles of all the European capitals." If so, let her go on moving there. I for one, after trying her book, shall never stop her. This is how the Comtesse solves the problem of opening a conversation:
"In commencing a conversation, the greatest care should be devoted to the selection of a topic, good taste demanding that one should sedulously avoid any subject of which one's vis-a-vis may be in ignorance. Nor are the mere words alone to be considered. In the art of conversation much depends upon manner. The true conversationalist must, in opening, invest himself with an atmosphere of interest and solicitude. He must, as we say in French, be prepared to payer les rais de la conversation. In short, he must 'give himself an air.'"
There! Go and do it if you can. I admit that I can't. I have no idea what the French phrase above means, but I know that personally I cannot "invest myself with an atmosphere of interest." I might manage about two per cent on five hundred dollars. But what is that in these days of plutocracy?
At any rate I tried the Comtesse's directions at a reception last week, on being introduced to an unknown lady. And they failed. I cut out nearly all the last part, and confined myself merely to the proposed selection of a topic, endeavouring to pick it with as much care as if I were selecting a golf club out of a bag. Naturally I had to confine myself to the few topics that I know about, and on which I can be quite interesting if I get started.
"Do you know any mathematics?" I asked.
"No," said the lady.
This was too bad. I could have shown her some good puzzles about the squares of the prime numbers up to forty-one.
I paused and gave myself more air.
"How are you," I asked, "on hydrostatics?"
"I beg your pardon," she said. Evidently she was ignorant again.
"Have you ever studied the principles of aerial navigation?"
I asked.
"No," She answered.
I was pausing again and trying to invest myself with an air of further interest, when another man was introduced to her, quite evidently, from his appearance, a vapid jackass without one tenth of the brain calibre that I have.
"Oh, how do you do?" he said. "I say, I've just heard that Harvard beat Princeton this afternoon. Great, isn't it?"
In two minutes they were talking like old friends. How do these silly asses do it?
When Dressed Hogs are Dull
An equally unsuccessful type of conversation, often overheard at receptions, is where one of the two parties to it is too surly, too stupid, or too self-important and too rich to talk, and the other labours in vain.
The surly one is, let us say, a middle-aged, thick-set man of the type that anybody recognizes under the name Money Hog. This kind of person, as viewed standing in his dress suit, mannerless and stupid, too rich to have to talk and too dull to know how to, always recalls to my mind the head-line of the market reports in the newspapers, "Dressed Hogs are Dull."
The other party to the conversation is a winsome and agreeable woman, trying her best to do her social duty.
But, tenez, as the Comtesse of Z– would say, I can exactly illustrate the position and attitude of the two of them from a recollection of my childhood. I remember that in one of my nursery books of forty years ago there was a picture entitled "The Lady in Love With A Swine." A willowy lady in a shimmering gown leaned over the rail of a tessellated pig-sty, in which an impossibly clean hog stood in an attitude of ill-mannered immobility. With the picture was the rhyming legend,
There was a Lady in love with a swine,
"Honey," said she, "will you be mine?
I'll build you a silver sty
And in it you shall lie."
"Honk!" said He.
There was something, as I recall it, in the sweet willingness of the Lady that was singularly appealing, and contrasted with the dull mannerless passivity of the swine.
In each of the little stanzas that followed, the pretty advances of the Lady were rebuffed by a surly and monosyllabic "honk" from the hog.
Here is the social counterpart of the scene in the picture-book. Mr. Grunt, capitalist, is standing in his tessellated sty,—the tessellated sty being represented by the hardwood floor of a fashionable drawing-room. His face is just the same as the face of the pig in the picture-book. The willowy lady, in the same shimmering clothes and with the same pretty expression of eagerness, is beside him.
"Oh, Mr. Grunt," she is saying, "how interesting it must be to be in your place and feel such tremendous power. Our hostess was just telling me that you own practically all the shoemaking machinery factories—it IS shoe-making machinery, isn't it?—east of Pennsylvania."
"Honk!" says Mr. Grunt.
"Shoe-making machinery," goes on the willowy lady (she really knows nothing and cares less about it) "must be absolutely fascinating, is it not?"
"Honk!" says Mr. Grunt.
"But still you must find it sometimes a dreadful strain, do you not? I mean, so much brain work, and that sort of thing."
"Honk!" says Mr. Grunt.
"I should love so much to see one of your factories. They must be so interesting."
"Honk!" says Mr. Grunt. Then he turns and moves away sideways. Into his little piggy eyes has come a fear that the lady is going to ask him to subscribe to something, or wants a block of his common stock, or his name on a board of directors. So he leaves her. Yet if he had known it she is probably as rich as he is, or richer, and hasn't the faintest interest in his factories, and never intends to go near one. Only she is fit to move and converse in polite society and Mr. Grunt is not.
2.—Heroes and Heroines
"What are you reading?" I asked the other day of a blue-eyed boy of ten curled up among the sofa cushions.
He held out the book for me to see.
"Dauntless Ned among the Cannibals," he answered.
"Is it exciting?" I enquired.
"Not very," said the child in a matter-of-fact tone. "But it's not bad."
I took the book from him and read aloud at the opened page.
"In a compact mass the gigantic savages rushed upon our hero, shrieking with rage and brandishing their huge clubs. Ned stood his ground fearlessly, his back to a banana tree. With a sweep of his cutlass he severed the head of the leading savage from his body, while with a back stroke of his dirk he stabbed another to the heart. But resistance against such odds was vain. By sheer weight of numbers, Ned was borne to the ground. His arms were then pinioned with stout ropes made of the fibres of the boobooda tree. With shrieks of exultation the savages dragged our hero to an opening in the woods where a huge fire was burning, over which was suspended an enormous caldron of bubbling oil. 'Boil him, boil him,' yelled the savages, now wrought to the point of frenzy."
"That seems fairly exciting, isn't it?" I said.
"Oh, he won't get boiled," said the little boy. "He's the hero."
So I knew that the child has already taken his first steps in the disillusionment of fiction.
Of course he was quite right as to Ned. This wonderful youth, the hero with whom we all begin an acquaintance with books, passes unhurt through a thousand perils. Cannibals, Apache Indians, war, battles, shipwrecks, leave him quite unscathed. At the most Ned gets a flesh wound which is healed, in exactly one paragraph, by that wonderful drug called a "simple."
But the most amazing thing about this particular hero, the boy Ned, is the way in which he turns up in all the great battles and leading events of the world.
It was Ned, for example, who at the critical moment at Gettysburg turned in his saddle to General Meade and said quietly, "General, the day is ours." "If it is," answered Meade, as he folded his field glass, "you alone, Ned, have saved it."
In the same way Ned was present at the crossing of the
Delaware with Washington. Thus:—
"'What do you see, Ned?' said Washington, as they peered from the leading boat into the driving snow.
"'Ice,' said Ned. 'My boy,' said the Great American General, and a tear froze upon his face as he spoke, 'you have saved us all.'"
Here is Ned at Runningmede when King John with his pen in hand was about to sign the Magna Carta.
"For a moment the King paused irresolute, the uplifted quill in his hand, while his crafty, furtive eyes indicated that he might yet break his plighted faith with the assembled barons.
"Ned laid his mailed hand upon the parchment.
"'Sign it,' he said sternly, 'or take the consequences.'
"The King signed.
"'Ned,' said the Baron de Bohun, as he removed his iron vizor from his bronze face, 'thou hast this day saved all England.'"
In the stories of our boyhood in which Ned figured, there was no such thing as a heroine, or practically none. At best she was brought in as an afterthought. It was announced on page three hundred and one that at the close of Ned's desperate adventures in the West Indies he married the beautiful daughter of Don Diego, the Spanish governor of Portobello; or else, at the end of the great war with Napoleon, that he married a beautiful and accomplished French girl whose parents had perished in the Revolution.
Ned generally married away from home. In fact his marriages were intended to cement the nations, torn asunder by Ned's military career. But sometimes he returned to his native town, all sunburned, scarred and bronzed from battle (the bronzing effect of being in battle is always noted): he had changed from a boy to a man: that is, from a boy of fifteen to a man of sixteen. In such a case Ned marries in his own home town. It is done after this fashion:
"But who is this who advances smiling to greet him as he crosses the familiar threshold of the dear old house? Can this tall, beautiful girl be Gwendoline, the child-playmate of his boyhood?"
Well, can it? I ask it of every experienced reader—can it or can it not?
Ned had his day, in the boyhood of each of us. We presently passed him by. I am speaking, of course, of those of us who are of maturer years and can look back upon thirty or forty years of fiction reading. "Ned," flourishes still, I understand, among the children of today. But now he flies in aeroplanes, and dives in submarines, and gives his invaluable military advice to General Joffre and General Pershing.
But with the oncoming of adolescent years something softer was needed than Ned with his howling cannibals and his fusillade of revolver shots.
So the "Ned" of the Adventure Books was supplanted by the Romantic Heroine of the Victorian Age and the Long-winded Immaculate who accompanied her as the Hero.
I do not know when these two first opened their twin career. Whether Fenimore Cooper or Walter Scott began them, I cannot say. But they had an undisputed run on two continents for half a century.
This Heroine was a sylph. Her chiefest charm lay in her physical feebleness. She was generally presented to us in some such words as these:
"Let us now introduce to our readers the fair Madeline of Rokewood. Slender and graceful and of a form so fragile that her frame scarce fitted to fulfil its bodily functions…she appeared rather as one of those ethereal beings of the air who might visit for a brief moment this terrestrial scene, than one of its earthly inhabitants. Her large, wondering eyes looked upon the beholder in childlike innocence."
Sounds simple, doesn't it? One might suspect there was something wrong with the girl's brain. But listen to this:—
"The mind of Madeline, elegantly formed by the devoted labours of the venerable Abbe, her tutor, was of a degree of culture rarely found in one so young. Though scarce eighteen summers had flown over her head at the time when we introduce her to our readers, she was intimately conversant with the French, Italian, Spanish, and Provencal tongues. The abundant pages of history, both ancient and modern, sacred and profane, had been opened for her by her devoted instructor. In music she played with exquisite grace and accuracy upon both the spinet and the harpsichord, while her voice, though lacking something in compass, was sweet and melodious to a degree."
From such a list of accomplishments it is clear that Madeline could have matriculated, even at the Harvard Law School, with five minutes preparation. Is it any wonder that there was a wild rush for Madeline? In fact, right after the opening description of the Heroine, there follows an ominous sentence such as this:—
"It was this exquisite being whose person Lord Rip de Viperous, a man whose reputation had shamed even the most licentious court of the age, and had led to his banishment from the presence of the king, had sworn to get within his power."
Personally I don't blame Lord Rip a particle; it must have been very rough on him to have been banished from the presence of the king—enough to inflame a man to do anything.
With two such characters in the story, the scene was set and the plot and adventures followed as a matter of course. Lord Rip de Viperous pursued the Heroine. But at every step he is frustrated. He decoys Madeline to a ruined tower at midnight, her innocence being such and the gaps left in her education by the Abbe being so wide, that she is unaware of the danger of ruined towers after ten thirty P.M. In fact, "tempted by the exquisite clarity and fulness of the moon, which magnificent orb at this season spread its widest effulgence over all nature, she accepts the invitation of her would-be-betrayer to gather upon the battlements of the ruined keep the strawberries which grew there in wild profusion."
But at the critical moment, Lord de Viperous is balked. At the very instant when he is about to seize her in his arms, Madeline turns upon him and says in such icy tones, "Titled villain that you are, unhand me," that the man is "cowed." He slinks down the ruined stairway "cowed." And at every later turn, at each renewed attempt, Madeline "cows" him in like fashion.