hat you
would really think she had a mighty passion for Brookfield."

"Or in it," suggested Freshfield.

"Or in it!" she laughed assentingly.

Mr. Pole was perceived entering the garden, rubbing his hands a little
too obsequiously to some remark of the baronet's, as the critical ladies
imagined. Sir Twickenham's arm spread out in a sweep; Mr. Pole's head
nodded. After the ceremony of the salute, the ladies were informed of
Sir Twickenham's observation: Sir Twickenham Pryme, a statistical member
of Parliament, a well-preserved half-century in age, a gentleman in
bearing, passably grey-headed, his whiskers brushed out neatly, as if he
knew them individually and had the exact amount of them collectively
at his fingers' ends: Sir Twickenham had said of Mr. Pole's infant park
that if devoted to mangold-wurzel it would be productive and would pay:
whereas now it was not ornamental and was waste.

"Sir Twickenham calculates," said Mr. Pole, "that we should have a crop
of--eh?"

"The average?" Sir Twickenham asked, on the evident upward mounting of a
sum in his brain. And then, with a relaxing look upon Cornelia: "Perhaps
you might have fifteen, sixteen, perhaps for the first year; or,
say--you see, the exact acreage is unknown to me. Say roughly, ten
thousand sacks the first year."

"Of what?" inquired Cornelia.

"Mangold-wurzel," said the baronet.

She gazed about her. Mr. Barrett was gone.

"But, no doubt, you take no interest in such reckonings?" Sir Twickenham
added.

"On the contrary, I take every interest in practical details."

Practical men believe this when they hear it from the lips of
gentlewomen, and without philosophically analyzing the fact that it is
because the practical quality possesses simply the fascination of a
form of strength. Sir Twickenham pursued his details. Day closed on
Brookfield blankly. Nevertheless, the ladies felt that the situation
was now dignified by tragic feeling, and remembering keenly how they had
been degraded of late, they had a sad enjoyment of the situation.

CHAPTER XVIII

Meantime Wilfrid was leading a town-life and occasionally visiting
Stornley. He was certainly not in love with Lady Charlotte
Chillingworth, but he was in harness to that lady. In love we have
some idea whither we would go: in harness we are simply driven, and the
destination may be anywhere. To be reduced to this condition (which will
happen now and then in the case of very young men who a