‘The people who live there,’ exclaimed Robert, ‘have neither home nor subsistence if they are driven out. Murewell is full--times bad--most of the people old.’ ‘And eviction “a sentence of death,” I suppose,’ interrupted the Squire, studying him with sarcastic eyes. ‘Well, I have no belief in a Gladstonian Ireland, still less in a Radical England. Supply and demand, cause and effect, are enough for me. The Mile End cottages are out of repair, Mr. Elsmere, so Mr. Henslowe tells me, because the site is unsuitable, the type of cottage out of date. People live in them at their peril; I don’t pull them down, or rather’--correcting himself with exasperating consistency--‘Mr. Henslowe doesn’t pull them down, because, like other men, I suppose, he dislikes an outcry. But if the population stays, it stays at its own risk. Now have I made myself plain?’ The two men eyed one another. ‘Perfectly plain,’ said Robert quietly. ‘Allow me to remind you, Mr. Wendover, that there are other matters than eviction capable of provoking an outcry.’ ‘As you please,’ said the other indifferently. ‘I have no doubt I shall find myself in the newspapers before long. If so, I dare say I shall manage to put up with it. Society, is fanatics and the creatures they hunt. If I am to be hunted, I shall be in good company.’ Robert stood, hat in hand, tormented with a dozen cross-currents of feeling. He was forcibly struck with the blind and comparatively motiveless pugnacity of the Squire’s conduct. There was an extravagance in it which for the first time recalled to him old Meyrick’s lucubrations. ‘I have done no good, I see, Mr. Wendover,’ he said at last, slowly. ‘I wish I could have induced you to do an act of justice and mercy. I wish I could have made you think more kindly of myself. I have failed in both. It is useless to keep you any longer. Good morning.’ He bowed. The Squire also bent forward. At that moment Robert caught sight beside his shoulder of an antique, standing on the mantel piece, which was a new addition to the room. It was a head of Medusa, and the frightful stony calm of it struck on Elsmere’s ruffled nerves with extraordinary force. It flashed across him that here was an apt symbol of that absorbing and overgrown life of the intellect which blights the heart and chills the senses. And to that spiritual Medusa, the man before him was not the first victim he had known. Possessed with the fancy, the young man made his way into the hall. Arrived there, he looked round with a kind of passionate regret: ‘Shall I ever see this again?’ he asked himself. During the past twelve months his pleasure in the great house had been much more than sensuous. Within those walls his mind had grown, had reached to a fuller stature than before, and a man loves, or should love, all that is associated with the maturing of his best self.