“Are you not feeling well?” she asked. “You look pale, dear.” “It is nothing,” he replied. “I may have caught a slight chill in the avenue, as no doubt the dew is falling, and there are no clouds in the sky. The night is very still and lovely, Julia. No—I think not—no, I cannot have been chilled there. I do not know what it is. Well—I will not say that either. To tell you the whole truth, I am worried.” “Worried? About what?” “I am uneasy, for one thing, about Arminell. She has got queer fancies in her head. Giles also is not well; and there is something further—in itself nothing, but though a trifle it is distressing me greatly.” “What is it?” “The leaders of my choice pines, which I had planted about the grounds, have been maliciously cut off. The thing has been done out of spite, and to hurt me, and yet the real sufferers are yet unborn. A hundred years hence these trees would have been admired for their stateliness—and now they are mutilated. I shall be dead and forgotten long before any tree I have put in comes to size. I am pained—this has been aimed at me, to wound me. I fear this has been done because I have refused to allow my house to be undermined.” “Who can have done it?” “I do not know. If I did know, I would not prosecute. That is one of the privileges of our privileged class—to bear injuries and impertinences without resentment. I am hurt—I am hurt greatly. The matter may be a trifle”—his lordship stood up—“but—after all I have done for the Orleigh people—it does seem unkind.” Lady Lamerton put out her hand, and took that of her husband. “Never mind,” she said; “he who did it will come to regret it.” “The injury does not touch the Lamertons alone,” said his lordship; “we throw open the park and gardens every Saturday to the public, and we allow Bands of Hope, and Girls’ Friendly Societies, and Choirs, and all sorts of agglomerations of men to come here and picnic in our grounds and strew them with sandwich papers and empty gingerbeer bottles, and cut their initials on the park gates and trees. A century hence the trees that have been mutilated would have grown into magnificence, and overshadowed heaven knows what—political, social or religious holiday-taking companies and awkward squads.” “Put in some more pines, next autumn.” “What with rabbits and the public, planting is discouraging work. It costs a lot of money, and you get no satisfaction from it. My dear Julia, it is one of the privileges—no—drawbacks of our class, that we expose a wide surface to the envious and the evil-disposed. They can injure us in a thousand ways, whereas our powers of self-protection are unduly limited. If we try to save ourselves, we do ourselves injury, as pigs when swimming cut their own throats with their fore-claws.” “Never mind that. Whom shall we invite,—or rather, whom must we omit? I must send out cards of invitations to our garden party at once.”