“Godalming withholds from Mr. Hepplestall the light of his approval,” said Mr. Seccombe, “but--” “Approve a turn-coat that was once a gentleman? Why, he has dined at Brooks’ and now blacks his sweaty hands with coal. Is there defense for him?” asked Godalming. “I am prepared to defend him,” said Seccombe. “Then you’re a Jacobin.” Godalming turned an outraged back. “Verners will correct me if I am wrong,” said Collinson, “but we hear of Mr. Hepplestall that he has a great steam-driven factory, with a small town at its feet, and by his steam is driving out of trade the older traders in his district. Is that true?” “Entirely,” said Mr. Verners, “though it staggers me that news of so small a matter has traveled so far and so fast.” “Some of us have our eyes on steam,” said Seccombe, “and some of us,” he eyed Godalming with severity, “some of us prefer that a power like steam should be in the hands of men of our order.” “But they cannot be of our order,” protested Verners, scandalized. “They cease, of their own conduct, to be of our order.” “You do not dispute the facts about Hepplestall?” “No. It’s your conclusions I find amazing.” “Oh,” said Godalming, “this isn’t Almack’s Club at all. We’re in France, and Mr. Collinson is wearing a red cap, and Mr. Seccombe has no breeches and--rot me if I ever expected to hear such damned revolutionary sentiments from an Englishman.” “Will you do me the favor, my lord, to consider the picture Mr. Verners has assented to be veracious?” Mr. Seccombe said, leaning back in his chair and looking like nothing so much as Maclise’s Talleyrand in the Fraser Portraits; elbows on the arms of his chair, hands caressing his stomach, knees wide apart, the sole of one shoe rubbing against the other, a look of placid benignity on his face. “That large factory, dominating a town of cottages where its workers live, under the owner’s eye, and that owner a gentleman who has extinguished the small lower-class manufacturers of his neighborhood. I ask you to consider that picture and to tell me what there is in it that you feel undesirable. To me, my lord, it is an almost feudal picture. The Norman Keep, with a village clustered around its walls, is to my mind the precedent of Mr. Hepplestall’s factory with its workers in their cottages about it. I confess to an admiration of this Hepplestall, whom you regard as a traitor to our order and I as a benefactor to that order. You will hardly assert that our order is unshaken by the deplorable events in France, you will hardly say that, even before that unparalleled outbreak of ruffianism, our order had maintained the high prestige of the Feudal days. A man in whose action I see possibilities of restoring in full our ancient privileges is a man to be approved and to be supported by us. If we do not support him, and others like him, what results? Abandoned by us, he must consort with somebody and he will consort naturally with other steam-power manufacturers, adding to their