But, being a cheery person who took the world as he found it, he said to his wife when he got home that day: “Go and call at Vale Royal, Anne; the man’s a very good fellow. No nonsense about his origin. Told us all he began life with three pounds in his pocket. Don’t like going to see ’em in Roxhall’s place? Oh, Lord, my dear, that’s sentiment. If Roxhall hadn’t sold the place they couldn’t have bought it, could they?” “But why should we know them?” said the lady, who was unwilling to accord her countenance to new people. “Because he’s promised two hundred guineas to the ‘dogs,’” said the marquis with a chuckle, “and because he’s a pillar of the Tory Democracy, my dear!” “Tory Democracy? A contradiction in terms!” said the lady. “You might as well say Angelic Anarchy!” “We shall come to that, too,” said her spouse. CHAPTER XIV. The snow was gone, but it was still cold and unpleasant weather when the ruler of Mr. Massarene’s fate, accompanied by a score or more intimate acquaintances who had been persuaded to patronize “Billy,” arrived in the dusk at Vale Royal with an enormous amount of luggage and a regiment of body-servants and maids. “You needn’t have come to meet us. I know my way about here better than you do,” was the ungracious salutation with which the host, who had gone himself to the station, was met by the object of his veneration. She never flattered him now; she had got him well in hand; it was no longer necessary to do violence to her nature; when one likes the use of the spur one does not humor one’s horse with sugar; she thought the spur and the whip salutary for him, and employed them with scant mercy. She mounted as lightly as a young cat to the box of the four-in-hand break, took the reins, and drove her mesmerized, trembling yet enchanted victim through the dusky lanes and over the muddy roads which were familiar to her, the lights of the lamps flashing, and the chatter and laughter of the other occupants of the break bringing the laboring people out of their cottages, as the lady whom they knew so well flew by them in the twilight. “Seems kind o’ heartless like in Lady Kenny to go to the great house now the poor lord’s in it no more; him her own cousin and all,” said a young woman to her husband who was only a hedger and ditcher, but a shrewd observer in his way, and who replied, as he looked after the four white-stockinged bays: “Lady Kenny aren’t one to cry for spilt milk; she knows where her bread is buttered. Lord, gal, ’twas she made Roxhall sell, and I’ll take my oath as I stands here that most o’ the blunt went in her pocket.”