y Lisle happened to mention the Marples,
and Millicent glanced at him thoughtfully. She knew that he met Bella at
their house.

"You have seen a good deal of these people, one way or another," she
remarked.

"These people? Aren't you a little prejudiced against them?"

"I suppose I am," Millicent confessed.

"Then won't you give me the reason? Your point of view isn't always clear
to an outsider."

"I'll try to be lucid. I don't so much object to Marple as I do to what
he stands for; I mean to modern tendency."

"That's as involved as ever."

The girl showed a little good-humored impatience. She did not care to
supply the explanation--it was against her instincts--and she was
inclined to wonder why she should do so merely because the man had asked
for it.

"Well," she said, "the feudal system isn't dead, and I believe that what
is best in it need never disappear altogether. Of course, it had its
drawbacks, but I think it was better than the commercialism that is
replacing it. It recognized obligations on both sides, and there is a
danger of forgetting them; the new people often fail to realize them at
all. Marple--I'm using him as an example--bought the land for what he
could get out of it."

"About three per cent., he told me. It isn't a great inducement."

Millicent made a half-disdainful gesture.

"He gets a great deal more--sport, a status, friends and standing, and a
means of suitably entertaining them. That, I suppose, is one reason why
the return in money from purely agricultural land is so small."

"Then is it wrong for a business man to buy these things, if he can pay
for them?"

"Oh, no! But he must take up the duties attached to his purchase. When
you buy land, human lives go with it. They're still largely in the
landlord's hands. Of course, we have legislation which has curtailed the
land-owner's former powers, but it's a soulless, mechanical thing that
can never really take the place of direct personal interest."

She stopped and glanced back down the winding dale. Here and there smooth
pastures climbed the slopes that shut it in, but over part of them ranged
mighty oaks, still almost green. Beyond these, beeches tinted with brown
and crimson glowed against the dusky foliage of spruces and silver-firs.

"One needs wisdom, love of the soil and all that lives on it, and perhaps
patience most of all," she resumed. "These woods are an example. They are
not natural like your forests--every tre