every now and then an
aristocrat who is also an accident, a man of intellectual
independence and insight, a Napoleon born in the purple. His vast
work was mostly invisible, and very little could be got out of him
in private life except a crusty and rather cynical sense of humor.
But it was certainly the accident of his presence at a family dinner
of the Fishers, and the unexpected opinion he expressed, which
turned what might have been a dinner-table joke into a sort of small
sensational novel.

Save for Lord Saltoun, it was a family party of Fishers, for the
only other distinguished stranger had just departed after dinner,
leaving the rest to their coffee and cigars. This had been a figure
of some interest--a young Cambridge man named Eric Hughes who was
the rising hope of the party of Reform, to which the Fisher family,
along with their friend Saltoun, had long been at least formally
attached. The personality of Hughes was substantially summed up in
the fact that he talked eloquently and earnestly through the whole
dinner, but left immediately after to be in time for an appointment.
All his actions had something at once ambitious and conscientious;
he drank no wine, but was slightly intoxicated with words. And his
face and phrases were on the front page of all the newspapers just
then, because he was contesting the safe seat of Sir Francis Verner
in the great by-election in the west. Everybody was talking about
the powerful speech against squirarchy which he had just delivered;
even in the Fisher circle everybody talked about it except Horne
Fisher himself who sat in a corner, lowering over the fire.

"We jolly well have to thank him for putting some new life into the
old party," Ashton Fisher was saying. "This campaign against the old
squires just hits the degree of democracy there is in this county.
This act for extending county council control is practically his
bill; so you may say he's in the government even before he's in the
House."

"One's easier than the other," said Harry, carelessly. "I bet the
squire's a bigger pot than the county council in that county. Verner
is pretty well rooted; all these rural places are what you call
reactionary. Damning aristocrats won't alter it."

"He damns them rather well," observed Ashton. "We never had a
better meeting than the one in Barkington, which generally goes
Constitutional. And when he said, 'Sir Francis may boast of blue
blood; let us show we have red blood