to hate the innocent people. She had begun to feel rabid about their class generally, and to find words straying to her lips such as had struck her as in very bad taste when old Lady Summerton said them. Lady Summerton believed the poor were a host of impostors, and trades-people an organised band of robbers, and attributed to the _nouveaux riches_ every debasing practice and sentiment. Clare had been disgusted by these opinions in the old days. She had drawn herself up in her youthful dignity, and had almost reproved her senior. “They are good enough sort of people, only they are not of our class,” Clare had said; “please don’t call them names. One may be a Christian though one is not well-born.” Such had been her truly Christian feeling while yet she was undisturbed by any doubt that to be well-born, and especially to be born in Arden, was the highest grace conceded by heaven. But now that doubt had been cast upon this gospel, and that she daily and hourly felt the scepticism in Edgar’s eyes, Clare’s feelings had become as violent as old Lady Summerton’s. The sentiment in her mind was that of scorn and detestation towards the multitude which was struggling to rise into that heaven wherein the Ardens and Thornleighs shone serene. “The poor people” were different; they made no pretences, assumed no equality; but the idea that Alice Pimpernel came under the generic title of young lady exactly as she herself did, and that the daughter of a Liverpool man might ride, and drive, and dress, and go everywhere on the same footing as Clare Arden, became wormwood to her soul.