harge of other people's lives,
and then look at the result!"

"Well, the result, even in rural England, is not always so bad," said
Aldous Raeburn, smiling a little, but more coldly. Marcella, glancing at
him, understood in a moment that she had roused a certain family and
class pride in him--a pride which was not going to assert itself, but
none the less implied the sudden opening of a gulf between herself and
him. In an instant her quick imagination realised herself as the
daughter and niece of two discredited members of a great class. When she
attacked the class, or the system, the man beside her--any man in
similar circumstances--must naturally think: "Ah, well, poor girl--Dick
Boyce's daughter--what can you expect?" Whereas--Aldous Raeburn!--she
thought of the dignity of the Maxwell name, of the width of the Maxwell
possessions, balanced only by the high reputation of the family for
honourable, just and Christian living, whether as amongst themselves or
towards their neighbours and dependents. A shiver of passionate vanity,
wrath, and longing passed through her as her tall frame stiffened.

"There are model squires, of course," she said slowly, striving at least
for a personal dignity which should match his. "There are plenty of
landowners who do their duty as they understand it--no one denies that.
But that does not affect the system; the grandson of the best man may be
the worst, but his one-man power remains the same. No! the time has come
for a wider basis. Paternal government and charity were very well in
their way--democratic self-government will manage to do without them!"

She flung him a gay, quivering, defiant look. It delighted her to pit
these wide and threatening generalisations against the Maxwell power--to
show the heir of it that she at least--father or no father--was no
hereditary subject of his, and bound to no blind admiration of the
Maxwell methods and position.

Aldous Raeburn took her onslaught very calmly, smiling frankly back at
her indeed all the time. Miss Boyce's opinions could hardly matter to
him intellectually, whatever charm and stimulus he might find in her
talk. This subject of the duties, rights, and prospects of his class
went, as it happened, very deep with him--too deep for chance
discussion. What she said, if he ever stopped to think of it in itself,
seemed to him a compound of elements derived partly from her personal
history, partly from the random opinions that young peop