She laughed, but he did not immediately draw his answer. They had reached the river-bank and the steps of the little bridge. Marcella mounted the bridge and paused midway across it, hanging over the parapet. He followed her, and both stood gazing at the house. It rose from the grass like some fabric of yellowish ivory cut and scrolled and fretted by its Tudor architect, who had been also a goldsmith. There were lights like jewels in its latticed windows; the dark fulness of the trees, disposed by an artist-hand, enwrapped or fell away from it as the eye required; and on the dazzling lawns, crossed by soft bands of shadow, scattered forms moved up and down--women in trailing dresses, and black-coated men. There were occasional sallies of talk and laughter, and from the open window of the drawing-room came the notes of a violin. "Brahms!" said Marcella, with delight. "Nothing but music and he could express this night--or the river--or the rising glow and bloom of everything." As she spoke George felt a quick gust of pleasure and romance sweep across him. It was as though senses that had been for long on the defensive, tired, or teased merely by the world, gave way in a moment to joy and poetry. He looked from the face beside him to the pictured scene in which they stood--the soft air filled his lungs--what ailed him?--he only knew that after many weeks he was, somehow, happy and buoyant again! Lady Maxwell, however, soon forgot the music and the moonlight. "That have made one's country?" she repeated, pausing on the words. "And of course that house appeals to you in the same way? Famous people have lived in it--people who belong to history. But for _me_, the real making of one's country is done out of sight, in garrets and workshops and coalpits, by people who die every minute--forgotten--swept into heaps like autumn leaves, their lives mere soil and foothold for the generation that comes after them. All yesterday morning, for instance, I spent trying to feed a woman I know. She is a shirtmaker; she has four children, and her husband is a docker out of work. She had sewed herself sick and blind. She couldn't eat, and she couldn't sleep. But she had kept the children alive--and the man. Her life will flicker out in a month or two; but the children's lives will have taken root, and the man will be eating and earning again. What use would your Dalhousies and Lawrences be to England without her and the hundreds of thousands like her?" "And yet it is you," cried George, unable to forbear the chance she gave him, "who would take away from this very woman the power of feeding her children and saving her husband--who would spoil all the lives in the clumsy attempt to mend one of them. How can you quote me such an instance! It amazes me."