If there was a little constraint on Nelligan's part at finding himself alone to do the honors to his distinguished guest, the feeling soon wore away, and a frank, hearty confidence was soon established between these two men, who up to the present moment had been following very different roads in life. Apart from a lurking soreness, the remnants of long-past bitterness, Nelligan's political opinions were fair and moderate, and agreed with Repton's now to a great extent. His views as to the people, their habits and their natures, were also strikingly just and true. He was not over-hopeful, nor was he despondent; too acute an observer to refer their faults to any single source, he regarded their complex, intricate characters as the consequence of many causes, the issue of many struggles. There was about all he said the calm judgment of a man desirous of truth; and yet, when he came to speak of the higher classes, the great country gentry, he displayed prejudices and mistakes quite incredible in one of his discernment. The old grudge of social disqualification had eaten deep into his heart, and, as Repton saw, it would take at least two generations of men, well-to-do and successful, to eradicate the sentiment. Nelligan was quick enough to see that these opinions of his were not shared by his guest, and said, “I cannot expect, Mr. Repton, that you will join me in these views; you have seen these people always as an equal, if not their superior; they met _you_ with their best faces and sweetest flatteries. Not so with us. They draw a line, as though to say, go on: make your fortunes; purchase estates; educate your children; send them to the universities with our own; teach them our ways, our instincts, our manners, and yet, at the end of all, you shall remain exactly where you began. You shall never be 'of us.'” “I am happy to say that I disagree with you,” said Repton; “I am a much older man than you, and I can draw, therefore, on a longer experience. Now the change that I myself have seen come over the tone and temper of the world since I was a boy is far more marvellous to me than all the new-fangled discoveries around us in steam and electricity. Why, sir, the man who now addresses you, born of an ancient stock, as good blood as any untitled gentleman of the land, was treated once as Jack Cade might be in a London drawing-room. The repute of liberal notions or politics at that day stamped you as a democrat and atheist If you sided with a popular measure, you were deemed capable of all the crimes of a 'Danton.'