“My father has purchased a place called Vale Royal,” continued Katherine. “You know it? Well, he wishes to be there _plus royaliste que le roi_. In the leases he gives to his farmers they are bound over to pay £40 for every pheasant killed or maimed on their ground. Is it not out-heroding Herod? He cares nothing for such trumpery sport himself; he has killed grizzlies and negroes and train-lifters; he would care nothing to fire at a flock of frightened hand-fed birds; but he wishes to tempt princes and lords to his coverts and to see the bags made on his estate cited in newspapers. Who set him that base example? Princes and lords themselves.” “No estates would be kept up but for the game,” said her host, rather feebly as he felt. “What satire can be so withering as such a statement? There is then no love of hereditary lands, no sense of woodland beauty, no interest in fur or feather without slaughter attached to them, no tenderness for tradition and for nature? Nothing, nothing whatever, of such pride in and affection for the soil itself as Shakspeare felt, who only owned a little rural freehold? Who can condemn you as utterly as you condemn yourselves?” “I think we are rather useful sometimes,” he said humbly. “Oh, very! You vote against marriage with a deceased wife’s sister and maintain the game laws! “I am not ashamed of my parents’ origin, Lord Framlingham, I assure you,” she added after a pause. “I am ashamed that they are ashamed of it.” “I understand, my dear, and I sympathize, though I suppose not many people would do either. You see, we all have our crosses. My daughters have to endure the misery of a conspicuous rank with wholly inadequate means--a more trying position than you can imagine.” “I should not mind that.”