pride ourselves on the fact
that--ha--our Aristocracy is recruited from the choice representatives
of the middle class--hum. The successful in every--that is to say in
all the respectable branches of activity--ha--see before them the
possibility, I would say the glorious possibility, of taking a seat in
that illustrious Upper Chamber, which is the balance of our free
Constitution. May the day never come, ladies and gentlemen,
when--ha--the ranks of our nobility suffer an intrusion of the
unworthy--hum. And I would extend this remark to the order below that
of peers, to the hereditary dignity which often
rewards--ha--distinguished merit. May those simple titles, so
pleasant--hum--to our ears, whether applied, I say, to man or
woman--ha--hum--ha--never be degraded by ignoble bearers, by the low
born--ha--by the tainted in repute--ha--in short by any of those unfit,
whether man or woman--ha--hum--who, like vile weeds, are thrown up to
the surface by the, shall I say, deluge of democracy."

Every hearer saw the application of this, and Lady Ogram had not long
to wait before she read it in print. Her temper that day was not mild.
She had occasion to controvert a friend, a Conservative lady, on some
little point of fact in an innocent gossip, and that lady never again
turned her steps to Rivenoak.

But worse was to come. Rarely had Lady Ogram any trouble with her
domestics; she chose them very carefully, and kept them for a long
time; they feared her, but respected her power of ruling, the rarest
gift in women of whatever rank. Now it befell that the maid in personal
attendance upon her left to be married, and in her engagement of a
successor Lady Ogram (perhaps because of her turbid state of mind just
now) was less circumspect than usual; she did not ascertain, for
instance, that the handmaid had a sister attached in like capacity to
the person of Mrs. Robb, nor did she note certain indications of a
temper far too closely resembling her own. Before many days had passed,
mistress and attendant found themselves on cool terms, and from this to
the extremity of warmth was a step as fatally easy as that from the
sublime to the ridiculous. Lady Ogram gave an order; it was imperfectly
obeyed. Lady Ogram, her eyes blazing with wrath, demanded an
explanation of this neglect; met with inadequate excuses, she thundered
and lightened. Any ordinary domestic would have been terror-stricken,
but this handmaid echoed storm with storm; sh