It was about ten minutes’ walk to The Lilies through the park; but as the night was so lovely, the baronet proposed they should take the longer way by the road, and see the river by moonlight. They walked on for a while without speaking. Raymond was enjoying the beauty of the scene, the gold of the fields and the green of the meadows, all shining alike in silver, the identity of the trees and flowers merged in uniform radiancy; he fancied his companion was admiring it too, until the latter broke the spell by an unexpected exclamation: “What an infernal bore money is, my dear fellow! I mean the want of it.” “Mon Dieu!” was the count’s astonished comment. And as Sir Simon said nothing more, he looked up at him uneasily: “I thought things had come all right again, mon cher?” “They never were right; that’s the deuce of it. If I’d found them right, I wouldn’t have been such an ass as to put them wrong. A man needn’t be a saint or a philosopher to keep within an income of ten thousand pounds a year; the difficulty is to live up to the name of it when you haven’t got more than the fifth in reality. A man’s life isn’t worth a year’s purchase with the worry these rascally fellows give one--a set of low scoundrels that would suck your vitals with all the pleasure in life, just because you happen to be a gentleman. Here’s that architect fellow that ran up those stables last year, blustering and blowing about his miserable twelve hundred pounds as if it was the price of a cathedral! I told the fellow he’d have to wait for his money, and of course he was all readiness and civility, anything to secure the job; and it’s no sooner done than he’s down on me with a hue-and-cry. He must have his money, forsooth, or else he’ll be driven to the painful necessity of applying through his man of business. A fellow of his kind threatening me with his man of business! The impertinence of his having a man of business at all! But I dare say it’s a piece of braggadocio; he thinks he’ll frighten the money out of me by giving himself airs and talking big. I’ll see the scoundrel further! There’s no standing the impudence of that class nowadays. Something must be done to check it. It’s a disgrace to the country to see the way they’re taking the upper hand and riding rough-shod over us. And mark my words if the country doesn’t live to regret it! We landed proprietors are the bulwark of the state; and if they let us be sent to the wall, they had better look to their own moorings. Mark my words, Bourbonais!” Bourbonais was marking his words, but he was too bewildered to make any sense out of them. “I agree with you, mon cher, the lower orders are becoming the upper ones in many ways; but what does that prove?” “Prove! It proves there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark!” retorted Sir Simon. “But how does that affect the case in question? I mean what has it to do with this architect’s bill?”