“That’s because your farmer is only a step removed from Hodge. Intellectually, I should imagine there isn’t much difference between the farmer and the hind nor between the hind and his sheep.” “Oh! come; we’re not so bad as that. Anyway, I tell you household suffrage for the counties is a bitter pill. Our clergy pull a sour face over it. It will take a lot of gilding to make it go down. I’m not sure I shall be returned, and I shall be the first Lindsay to be rejected since good old Noll’s days.” “Oh! come to the West Riding and we’ll console you. We dearly love a lord.” “Young Fitzwilliam didn’t find it so.” “Ah! he was weighted by a banker.” “But, seriously, do you think the people will be any better off when they get the vote?” “That depends.” “On how they use it? Not for revolution, I hope.” “For reform, I hope. For revolution if they cannot get reform.” “You don’t stick at tries.” “No; three acres and a cow is my minimum, and that is to be only typical of inroads in other directions.” “A leveller you?” “No! a diffuser.” “That’s a bitter word. I must throw that at the Archdeacon. He moans over my dangerous principles. He must rend himself over yours. How do you get on with him?” “Oh! I change the subject when he winces.” “See much of Wright these days?” “Enough.” “I suppose it’s a settled thing between the Manor and the Vicarage. She is too good for him.” “He hasn’t got her yet.” Lord Lindsay stole a glance out of the corner of his eyes. “Phew! sets the wind in that corner. Well, time’s up. That’s a waltz they’re starting and I’m booked.” When Lord Lindsay and Beaumont reentered the drawing-room Edward sought Eleanor St. Clair to claim the dance she had promised him. He was received with gay rebuke. “This is the way you fulfil your trust, Mr. Beaumont. Papa makes his bow to the Countess and sidles off incontinent to the sanctum of the Earl. I have no doubt he is at this moment smoking a cigar and discoursing learnedly on the virtues of the Earl’s very particular and precious Madeira to which my lord, they say, is indebted for his very particular and precious gout. It’s a mercy if the wine is so very particular and precious, or I should have papa prostrate with the gout, and from all accounts that would be as bad for me as for him. Deprived of my natural protector I rely, of course, on a certain cavalier from Yorkshire, and, lo! he, too, has vanished, spirited away by Lord Lindsay to his own secret cave, there to demolish institutions, or was it only reputations?” “As I was being spirited away I caught a vision of a radiant being threading the mazes of the Lancers on the arm of a dashing son of Mars, and looking in need neither of protection nor consolation.” “I am a woman and therefore can dissemble, Mr. Beaumont; but see, the sets are filling.”