And no doubt those good people were really wise in their generation. 'When Figaro came,' Arthur Berkeley said himself to Ernest, 'the French revolution wasn't many paces behind on the track of the ages.' 'Better even than the Primate, Mr. Berkeley,' said Hilda Tregellis, as she met him in a London drawing-room a few days later. 'What a delightful scene, that of the Countess of Coalbrookdale! You're doing real good, I do believe, by making people think about these things more seriously, you know. As poor dear Mr. Le Breton would have said, you've got an ethical purpose--isn't that the word?--underlying even your comic operas. By the way, do you ever see the Le Bretons now? Poor souls, I hear they're doing very badly. The elder brother, Herbert Le Breton--horrid wretch!--he's here to-night; going to marry that pretty Miss Faucit, they say; daughter of old Mr. Faucit, the candle-maker--no, not candles, soap I think it is--but it doesn't matter twopence nowadays, does it? Well, as I was saying, you're doing a great deal of good with characters like this Countess of Coalbrookdale. We want more mixture of classes, don't we? more free intercourse between them; more familiarity of every sort. For my part, now, I should really very much like to know more of the inner life of the working classes.' 'If only he'd ask me to go to lunch,' she thought, 'with his dear old father, the superannuated shoemaker! so very romantic, really!' But Arthur only smiled a sphinx-like smile, and answered lightly, 'You would probably object to their treatment of you as much as the countess objected to the uupleasant griminess of the too-realistic coal galleries. Suppose you were to fall into the hands of a logical old radical workman, for example, who tore you to pieces, mentally speaking, with a shake or two of his big teeth, and calmly informed you that in his opinion you were nothing more than a very empty-headed, pretentious, ignorant young woman--perhaps even, after the plain-spoken vocabulary of hie kind, a regular downright minx and hussey?' 'Charming,' Lady Hilda answered, with perfect candour; 'so very different from the senseless adulation of all the Hughs, and Guys, and Berties! What I do love in talking to clever men, Mr. Berkeley, is their delicious frankness and transparency. If they think one a fool, they tell one so plainly, or at least they let one see it without any reserve. Now that, you know, is really such a very delightful trait in clever people's characters!' 'I don't know how you can have had the opportunity of judging, Lady Hilda,' Arthur answered, looking at her handsome open face with a momentary glance of passing admiration--Hilda Tregellis was improving visibly as she matured--'for no one can possibly ever have thought anything of the sort with you, I'm certain: and that I can say quite candidly, without the slightest tinge of flattery or adulation.'