was taken by implication for lunatic; wherever she was heard or
seen, he had no case; a jury of some hundreds of both sexes, ready to be
sworn, pronounced against him. Only the personal enemies of the lord in
the suit presumed to doubt, and they exercised the discretion of a
minority.

But there is an upper middle class below the aristocratic, boasting an
aristocracy of morals, and eminently persuasive of public opinion, if not
commanding it. Previous to the relaxation, by amendment, of a certain
legal process, this class was held to represent the austerity of the
country. At present a relaxed austerity is represented; and still the
bulk of the members are of fair repute, though not quite on the level of
their pretensions. They were then, while more sharply divided from the
titular superiors they are socially absorbing, very powerful to brand a
woman's character, whatever her rank might be; having innumerable
agencies and avenues for that high purpose, to say nothing of the
printing-press. Lady Dunstane's anxiety to draw them over to the cause of
her friend set her thinking of the influential Mrs. Cramborne Wathin,
with whom she was distantly connected; the wife of a potent
serjeant-at-law fast mounting to the Bench and knighthood; the centre of
a circle, and not strangely that, despite her deficiency in the arts and
graces, for she had wealth and a cook, a husband proud of his
wine-cellar, and the ambition to rule; all the rewards, together with the
expectations, of the virtuous. She was a lady of incisive features bound
in stale parchment. Complexion she had none, but she had spotlessness of
skin, and sons and daughters just resembling her, like cheaper editions
of a precious quarto of a perished type. You discerned the imitation of
the type, you acknowledged the inferior compositor. Mr. Cramborne Wathin
was by birth of a grade beneath his wife; he sprang (behind a curtain of
horror) from tradesmen. The Bench was in designation for him to wash out
the stain, but his children suffered in large hands and feet, short legs,
excess of bone, prominences misplaced. Their mother inspired them
carefully with the religion she opposed to the pretensions of a nobler
blood, while instilling into them that the blood they drew from her was
territorial, far above the vulgar. Her appearance and her principles
fitted her to stand for the Puritan rich of the period, emerging by the
aid of an extending wealth into luxurious worldliness, a