“What have the English aristocracy brought into fashion? What do they uphold by example and precept?” she continued. “Their life is one course of reckless folly; the summer is wasted in crowded London houses, varied by race-meetings and pigeon-shooting; the autumn and winter are spent in the incessant slaughtering of birds and beasts; their beautiful country houses are only visited at intervals, when they are as crowded as a booth at a fair. What kind of example do they set to ‘the man from Dakota’? What do they suggest to him of self-denial, of culture, of true grace and courtesy, of contempt for ill-gotten riches? They crowd around him as poultry around a feeding-pan! The whole thing is discreditable. But perhaps the most shameful part in it is not his!” Hurstmanceaux was silent. He thought of Cocky and his sister, and he felt his blood tingle under the lash of her stinging words. “My own withers are unwrung,” he said at last with a smile. “I don’t do those things. My estates are extremely unproductive, and I live, for the chief part of the year, on one of them--Faldon.” “It is on the sea, I think?” “Yes; on the coast of Waterford.” “Do you cut your timber?” “I do not.” “Do you preserve?” “For sport? No. Wild life has a happy time of it, I assure you, with me.” “I am glad to hear any Englishman say so.” “Are we such a set of barbarians?” “Yes, you are very barbarous; much more so than the Hindoos whom you have conquered. Compare the simplicity of their diet, the purity of their arts, the beauty of their costume and their architecture, with a Lord Mayor’s feast, a Royal Academy show, a Manchester Canal, a Forth Bridge, a team of cyclists, a London woman’s gown! Barbarians!--barbarians indeed, worse than any Goth or Vandal!--the nation which destroyed Delhi!” “She must surely be a Russian,” thought Hurstmanceaux. “They often speak English with an admirable fluency. But why, if so, should Vale Royal affect her so singularly?” He was not impressionable in these ways; but his new acquaintance attracted him extremely. He admired her, and her voice charmed him like music. At that moment Ossian, perceiving in a distant field some sheep feeding on swedes in the snow, could not resist his hereditary instinct of shepherding them, and caused his master some trouble, as the sheep entirely mistook the collie’s good intentions and fled away in all directions. The lady watched the scene, standing still under a pollarded willow. When order was restored and they walked on again, she asked him what had made him give up hunting; in herself she regretted her late eloquence, and wished her companion to forget it. “What made you give up hunting?” she asked suddenly, as if conscious that the severity of her tone might appear strange to him. “Well, I have never told anybody,” he answered, and paused. Then he went on, in a rather embarrassed manner, nerved by the confidence which his unknown companion roused in him: