She turned and smiled down on me. “We English,” she said, “are a practical people. We assimilate 'um.” “Then, I suppose, they don't give trouble?” “Then they don't give trouble.” “They learn to shoot?” “And all that,” said Lady Forthundred. “Yes. And things go on. Sometimes better than others, but they go on--somehow. It depends very much on the sort of butler who pokes 'um about.” I suggested that it might be possible to get a secure twenty thousand a year by at least detrimental methods--socially speaking. “We must take the bad and the good of 'um,” said Lady Forthundred, courageously.... Now, was she a sample? It happened she talked. What was there in the brains of the multitude of her first, second, third, fourth, and fifth cousins, who didn't talk, who shone tall, and bearing themselves finely, against a background of deft, attentive maids and valets, on every spacious social scene? How did things look to them? 7 Side by side with Lady Forthundred, it is curious to put Evesham with his tall, bent body, his little-featured almost elvish face, his unequal mild brown eyes, his gentle manner, his sweet, amazing oratory. He led all these people wonderfully. He was always curious and interested about life, wary beneath a pleasing frankness--and I tormented my brain to get to the bottom of him. For a long time he was the most powerful man in England under the throne; he had the Lords in his hand, and a great majority in the Commons, and the discontents and intrigues that are the concomitants of an overwhelming party advantage broke against him as waves break against a cliff. He foresaw so far in these matters that it seemed he scarcely troubled to foresee. He brought political art to the last triumph of naturalness. Always for me he has been the typical aristocrat, so typical and above the mere forms of aristocracy, that he remained a commoner to the end of his days.