"A neighbour of theirs in Brookshire," she was saying, "was giving me last week the most extraordinary account of the doings at Mellor. She was the heiress of that house at Mellor"--here she addressed young Bayle, who, as a comparative stranger in the house, might be supposed to be ignorant of facts which everybody else knew--"a tumbledown place with an income of about two thousand a year. Directly she married she put a Socialist of the most unscrupulous type--so they tell me--into possession. The man has established what they call a 'standard rate' of wages for the estate--practically double the normal rate--coerced all the farmers, and made the neighbours furious. They say the whole district is in a ferment. It used to be the quietest part of the world imaginable, and now she has set it all by the ears. _She_, having married thirty thousand a year, can afford her little amusements; other people, who must live by their land, have their lives worried out of them." "She tells me that the system works on the whole extremely well," said Edward Watton, whose heightened colour alone betrayed the irritation of his mother's chronic aggression, "and that Maxwell is not at all unlikely to adopt it on his own estate." Mrs. Watton threw up her hands again. "The _idiocy_ of that man! Till he married her he was a man of sense. And now she leads him by the nose, and whatever tune he calls, the Government must dance to, because of his power in the House of Lords." "And the worst of it is," said Harding Watton, with an unpleasant laugh, "that if she were not a handsome woman, her influence would not be half what it is. She uses her beauty in the most unscrupulous way." "I believe that to be _entirely_ untrue," said Edward Watton, with emphasis, looking at his brother with hostility. George Tressady interrupted. He had an affection for Edward Watton, and cordially disliked Harding. "Is she really so handsome?" he asked, bending forward and addressing his hostess. Mrs. Watton scornfully took no notice. "Well, an old diplomat told me the other day," said Lord Fontenoy--but with a cold unwillingness, as though he disliked the subject--"that she was the most beautiful woman, he thought, that had been seen in London since Lady Blessington's time." "Lady Blessington! dear, dear!--Lady Blessington!" said Lady Tressady with malicious emphasis--an unfortunate comparison, don't you think? Not many people would like to be regarded as Lady Blessington's successor." "In any other respect than beauty," said Edward Watton, haughtily, with the same tension as before, "the comparison, of course, would be ridiculous." Harding shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting his chair back, said in the ear of a shy young man who sat next him: "In my opinion, the Count d'Orsay is only a question of time! However, one mustn't say that to Edward."