Lady Tressady interrupted her talk with the squire at the other end of the table to observe what was going on. She had been chattering very fast in a shrill, affected voice, with a gesticulation so free and French, and a face so close to his, that the nervous and finicking squire had been every moment afraid lest the next should find her white fingers in his very eyes. He felt an inward spasm of relief when he saw her attention diverted. "Is that Mr. Edward talking his Radicalism?" she asked, putting up a gold eyeglass--"his dear, wicked Radicalism? Ah! we all know where Mr. Edward got it." The table laughed. Harding Watton looked particularly amused. "Egeria was in this neighbourhood last week," he said, addressing Lady Tressady. "Edward rode over to see her. Since then he has joined two new societies, and ordered six new books on the Labour Question." Edward flushed a little, but went on eating his dinner without any other sign of disturbance. "If you mean Lady Maxwell," he said good-humouredly, "I can only be sorry for the rest of you that you don't know her." He raised his handsome head with a bright air of challenge that became him, but at the same time exasperated his mother. "That _woman!_" said Mrs. Watton with ponderous force, throwing up her hands as she spoke. Then she turned to Lord Fontenoy. "Don't _you_ regard her as the source of half the mischievous work done by this precious Government in the last two years?" she asked him imperiously. A half-contemptuous smile crossed Lord Fontenoy's worn face. "Well, really, I'm not inclined to make Lady Maxwell the scapegoat. Let them bear their own misdeeds." "Besides, what worse can you say of English Ministers than that they should be led by a woman?" said Mr. Watton, from the bottom of the table, in a piping voice. "In my young days such a state of things would have been unheard of. No offence, my dear, no offence," he added hastily, glancing at his wife. Letty glanced at George, and put up a handkerchief to hide her own merriment. Mrs. Watton looked impatient. "Plenty of English Cabinet Ministers have been led by women before now," she said drily; "and no blame to them or anybody else. Only in the old days you knew where you were. Women were corrupt--as they were meant to be--for their husbands and brothers and sons. They wanted something for somebody--and got it. Now they are corrupt--like Lady Maxwell--for what they are pleased to call 'causes,' and it is that which will take the nation to ruin."