‘If the succession law was swept away we might lose more than we can afford along with it.’ Dinah had heard ultra-revolutionary notions freely aired at times among Gaston’s friends, and, in her one-sided feminine way, had striven, over her cross-stitch, to think them out. ‘I, for one, should not like to see any church or chapel in England turned into a lecture place for these new unbelievers.’ ‘Unbelievers! Oh, that is quite a different story. We began by talking about the folly of class differences.’ Dinah was silent awhile. Then: ‘It would be impossible for you and me to think alike on all this,’ she told her companion, with a grave smile. ‘You have seen so much of the world, Lord Rex, perhaps have heard the debates in the Houses of Parliament!’ Lord Rex confessed that this intellectual advantage had befallen him. ‘And I have just watched the lives, the manners of a few more or less troubled men and women. Class differences, as you call them, may be folly. They are the hardest facts I know, the....’ Dinah saved herself, just in time, from adding, ‘the cruellest.’ ‘Beauty is the universal leveller,’ observed Lord Rex, with presence of mind. ‘A perfectly beautiful woman would grace the steps of any throne in Europe.’ ‘Leave thrones alone, Lord Rex Basire! If the beautiful woman wanted to make others happy, she would have most chance to do so in her own class of life.’ ‘And suppose the beautiful woman wanted to be happy herself, Mrs. Arbuthnot?’ ‘Happiness comes naturally if you see it on the faces of the people round you.’ Their politics had not taken the turn Lord Rex desired. He harked back, a little abruptly, upon his first premises. ‘Yes, I am for absolute equality, Gardener Adam and his wife, and that style of thing. I would make the shopkeeping capitalist, just as much as the bloated aristocrat, turn over a fresh leaf. If I ever marry,’ said Lord Rex Basire--‘don’t feel at all like marrying at present, but if I ever do--I hope to get for my wife some simple little village barbarian who has never been to a ball, never heard an opera, never seen a racecourse in her life!’ ‘A village barbarian--of what station?’ asked Dinah Arbuthnot. ‘Matter of blank indifference. I should marry the girl, not her station.’ ‘And afterwards? Would the barbarian be accepted by your family? Or would you accept hers? Or would you, both, give up society?’ ‘That would suit me best! Give up society. United to the woman one adored,’ said Lord Rex with fervour, ‘what could one want with artificial pleasures, with the eternal bore of dinners and dances?’ Dinah gave a chill laugh. She remembered the days when Gaston Arbuthnot was wont to use the like phrases, as a preface (so, in her present jealous misery, she thought) to returning to the world and its pleasures, unhampered by a wife.