are, and wherever he goes he
hears nothing but praise of the way you have treated your tenants and
the way you have tried to turn them into small landowners. He isn't
intelligent enough to realise that there is a principle behind all this.
He has simply come to feel that he has a lenient landlord and that he
has only to sit still and the plums will drop into his mouth, too.
Crockford is one of the weak spots in your system, Lady Jane. There is
no place for him or his kind in a self-supporting world."

She sighed.

"Then I am afraid he must go down," she said. "He simply stands in the
way of better men."

"One reads a good deal of Mr. Tallente, nowadays," Segerson remarked,
changing the conversation a little abruptly.

Jane leaned over and stroked the head of a dog which had come to lie at
her feet.

"He seems to be making a good deal of stir," she observed.

The young man frowned.

"You know I am not unsympathetic with your views, Lady Jane," he said, a
little awkwardly, "but I don't mind admitting that if I had a big stake
in the country I should be afraid of Tallente. No one seems to be able
to pin him down to a definite programme and yet day by day his influence
grows. The Labour Party is disintegrated. The best of all its factions
are joining the Democrats. He is practically leader of the Opposition
Party to-day and I don't see how they are going to stop his being Prime
Minister whenever he chooses."

"Don't you think he'll make a good Prime Minister?" Jane asked.

"No, I don't," was the curt answer. "He is too dark a horse for my
fancy."

"I expect Mr. Tallente will be ready with his programme when the time
comes," she observed. "He is a people's man, of course, and his
proposals will sound pretty terrible to a good many of the old school.
Still, something of the sort has to come."

The butler brought in the postbag while they talked. Segerson, as he
rose to depart, glanced with curiosity at half a dozen orange-coloured
wrappers which were among the rest of the letters.

"Fancy your subscribing to a press-cutting agency, Lady Jane!" he
exclaimed. "You haven't been writing a novel under a pseudonym, have
you?"

She laughed as she gathered up her correspondence in her hand.

"Don't pry into my secrets," she enjoined. "We may meet in Barnstaple
to-morrow. If the weather clears, I want to go in and see those cattle
for myself."

The young man took his reluctant departure. Jane crossed the hall,
ent