'Yes, I repeat,' said the hostess, haughtily, 'that persons like Chevenix should not send for their superiors, but wait till they are sent for.' 'Like Chevenix; how you run on, mother. One would think that the old days of sitting below the salt had come again!' exclaimed Jerry, with a somewhat ruffled air. 'As the world goes now, how long do you think this vast distinction of class and class will last? Why, nobility itself will one day pass away--nay, respect for it is nearly a thing of the past already.' 'Nobility pass away!' exclaimed Lady Julia, the descendant of twenty earls and more, her pale face growing paler at such unheard-of opinion. 'Where have you picked up such horrid Radical and Communistic ideas, Jerry? Not in the army surely!' 'I pick them up from the public prints, yet don't endorse them. But to me it seems that all will go in time, and quietly now, as no one will care to make a row about it. Don't you see the terrible tendency of the times? I call them terrible from your point of view, mother. Even the dignity of the Crown is slighted in almost every debate in the Lower House now by some fellow or other; and to me all this seems to foreshadow the coming time when the Crown itself may fall into the dust without defenders, for there will be no Cavaliers in England to send their plate to the melting pot and mount their serving men, and no loyal clans in the North to descend again under a Montrose or Dundee.' 'And all this is to come to pass because I don't approve of old Mr. Chevenix,' said Lady Julia, rather scornfully, as she fanned herself; and, then bowing to Goring, she nodded to Miss Wilmot, and both rising sailed away to the drawing-room. Goring read a peculiar expression in the fine face of the elder lady as she withdrew, and it gave him a clue to some of Jerry's movements lately; but he made no reference to it, nor would it have been courteous to do so, familiar as he and Jerry were. Jerry twirled his moustaches with a momentary air of annoyance. It was evident that there existed some secret bone of contention between mother and son--a skeleton in the cupboard at Wilmothurst; but who could have supposed that this ghastly personage was in reality the brilliant and blooming Bella Chevenix! And when, after having a few glasses of wine together, and a cigar in the smoking-room, they rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room, the obnoxious subject was again resumed by Jerry and his mother, somewhat apart from Bevil Goring, who drew a seat near the piano, over the keys of which Miss Wilmot was gracefully idling, or affecting an _andante_ of Beethoven. 'The invitations for the ball in your honour, my dear boy, are all issued,' said Lady Julia; 'and every one has accepted--only think of that! Every one, and here is the list.' He scanned it, and saw many familiar names that stood high in the county, and said, with a twirl of his moustache, 'I don't see the name of Chevenix here.'