ant future
for you; your tutor, alarmed by your attachment to a certain cottage at
Ascot which was minus a host, thanked his stars to be rid of you. At
Oxford you closed all books, except, of course, betting-books.

ST. OLPHERTS. I detected the tendency of the age--scholarship for the
masses. I considered it my turn to be merely intuitively intelligent.

AGNES. You left Oxford a gambler and a spendthrift. A year or two in
town established you as an amiable, undisguised debauchee. The rest is
modern history.

ST. OLPHERTS. Complete your sketch. Don't stop at the--rude outline.

AGNES. Your affairs falling into disorder, you promptly married a
wealthy woman--the poor, rich lady who has for some years honoured you
by being your duchess at a distance. This burlesque of a marriage
helped to reassure your friends, and actually obtained for you an
ornamental appointment for which an over-taxed nation provides a
handsome stipend. But, to sum up, you must always remain an irritating
source of uneasiness to your own order, as, luckily, you will always be
a sharp-edged weapon in the hands of mine.

ST. OLPHERTS. [With a polite smile.] Yours! Ah, to that small, unruly
section to which I understand you particularly attach yourself. To
the--

AGNES. [With changed manner, flashing eyes, harsh voice, and violent
gestures.] The sufferers, the toilers; that great crowd of old and
young--old and young stamped by excessive labour and privation all of
one pattern--whose backs bend under burdens, whose bones ache and grow
awry, whose skins, in youth and in age, are wrinkled and yellow; those
from whom a fair share of the earth's space and of the light of day is
withheld. [Looking down at him fiercely.] The half-starved who are
bidden to stand with their feet in the kennel to watch gay processions
in which you and your kind are borne high. Those who would strip the
robes from a dummy aristocracy and cast the broken dolls into the limbo
of a nation's discarded toys. Those who--mark me!--are already upon
the highway, marching, marching; whose time is coming as surely as
yours is going!

ST. OLPHERTS. [Clapping his hands gently.] Bravo! Bravo! Really a flash
of the old fire. Admirable! [She walks away to the window with an
impatient exclamation.] Your present affaire du coeur does not wholly
absorb you, then, Mrs. Ebbsmith. Even now the murmurings of love have
not entirely superseded the thunderous denunciations of--h'm--You
once bore a