Dark-haired, dark-eyed,
vivacity and intelligence lent her countenance an attraction very
different from the allurement of her cousin's delicate loveliness.
And because her countenance was a true mirror of her mind, she
argued shrewdly now, so shrewdly that she drove O'Moy to entrench
himself behind generalisations.
"My dear Sylvia, war is most merciful where it is most merciless,"
he assured her with the Irish gift for paradox. "At home in the
Government itself there are plenty who argue as you argue, and who
are wondering when we shall embark for England. That is because
they are intellectuals, and war is a thing beyond the understanding
of intellectuals. It is not intellect but brute instinct and brute
force that will help humanity in such a crisis as the present.
Therefore, let me tell you, my child, that a government of
intellectual men is the worst possible government for a nation
engaged in a war."
This was far from satisfying Miss Armytage. Lord Wellington
himself was an intellectual, she objected. Nobody could deny it.
There was the work he had done as Irish Secretary, and there was
the calculating genius he had displayed at Vimeiro, at Oporto, at
Talavera.
And then, observing her husband to be in distress, Lady O'Moy put
down her fashion plate and brought up her heavy artillery to relieve
him.
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