Vaughan rose—slowly, and with a beating heart. He rose perforce. For a moment he stood, deafened by his reception. For the smaller men saw in him one of the old family, the future landlord of two-thirds of them, the sometime owner of the very roof under which they were gathered. And he, while they greeted his rising and he stood waiting with an unhappy face for silence, wondered, even at this last moment, what he would say. And Heaven knows what he would have said—so hard was it to disappoint those cheering men, all looking at him with worship in their eyes—so painful was it to break old ties—if he had not caught behind him Mowatt’s whisper, “Eat his words! He’ll have to unsay——” No more than that, a fragment, but enough; enough to show him that he had better, far better seem false to these men, to his blood, to the past, than be false to himself. He straightened his shoulders, and lifted his head. “Gentlemen,” he said, and now his voice though low was steady, “I rise unwillingly—unwillingly, because I feel too late that I ought not to be here. That I have no right to be here. [No! No!] No right to be here, for this reason,” he continued, raising his hand for silence, “for this reason, that in much of what Sergeant Wathen has said, I cannot go with him.” There, it was out! But no more than a stare of perplexity passed from the more intelligent faces about him to the duller faces lower down the table. They did not understand; it was only clear that he could not mean what he seemed to mean. But he was going on in a silence so complete that a pin falling to the floor might have been heard! “I rise unwillingly, I say again, gentlemen,” he continued, “and I beg you to remember this, and that I did not come here of set purpose to flaunt my opinions before you. For I, too”—here he betrayed his secret agitation—“thus far I do go with Sergeant Wathen,—I, too, am for Our Ancient Constitution, I give place to no man in love of it. And I, too, am against revolution, I will stand second to none in abhorrence of it.” “Hear! Hear!” cried the Rector in a tone of unmistakable relief. “Hear, hear!” “Ay, go on,” chimed in the Squire. “Go on, lad, go on! That’s all right!” And half aside in his neighbour’s ear, “Gad! he frightened me!” he muttered. “But—but to be plain,” Vaughan resumed, pronouncing every word clearly, “I do not regard the Bill which the Sergeant has mentioned, the Bill which is in all your minds, as assailing the one, or as being tantamount to the other! On the contrary, I believe that it restores the ancient balance of the Constitution, and will avert, as nothing else will avert, a Revolution!” As he paused on that word, the Squire, who was of a free habit, tried to rise and speak, but choked. The Rector gasped. Only Mr. Cooke found his voice. He sprang to his feet, purple in the face. “By G—d!” he roared, “are we going to listen to this?” Vaughan sat down, pale but composed. But he found all eyes on him, and he rose again.