She looked sadly round the musty, forlorn place.

“But not so well, I am afraid, as any second-hand bookseller’s apprentice could have done it,” said Wharton, shaking his head.  “It’s maddening to think what duffers we gentlefolks are!”

“Why do you harp on that?” said Marcella, quickly.  She had been taking him over the house, and was in twenty minds again as to whether and how much she liked him.

“Because I have been reading some Board of Trade reports before breakfast,” said Wharton, “on one or two of the Birmingham industries in particular.  Goodness! what an amount of knowledge and skill and resource these fellows have that I go about calling the ‘lower orders.’  I wonder how long they are going to let me rule over them!”

“I suppose brain-power and education count for something still?” said Marcella, half scornfully.

“I am greatly obliged to the world for thinking so,” said Wharton with emphasis, “and for thinking so about the particular kind of brain-power I happen to possess, which is the point.  The processes by which a Birmingham jeweller makes the wonderful things which we attribute to ‘French taste’ when we see them in the shops of the Rue de la Paix are, of course, mere imbecility—­compared to my performances in Responsions.  Lucky for me, at any rate, that the world has decided it so.  I get a good time of it—­and the Birmingham jeweller calls me ‘sir.’”

“Oh! the skilled labour! that can take care of itself, and won’t go on calling you ‘sir’ much longer.  But what about the unskilled—­the people here for instance—­the villagers?  We talk of their governing themselves; we wish it, and work for it.  But which of us really believes that they are fit for it, or that they are ever going to get along without our brain-power?”

“No—­poor souls!” said Wharton, with a peculiar vibrating emphasis. “‘By their stripes we are healed, by their death we have lived.’  Do you remember your Carlyle?”

They had entered one of the bays formed by the bookcases which on either side of the room projected from the wall at regular intervals, and were standing by one of the windows which looked out on the great avenue.  Beside the window on either side hung a small portrait—­in the one case of an elderly man in a wig, in the other of a young, dark-haired woman.

“Plenty in general, but nothing in particular,” said Marcella, laughing.  “Quote.”

He was leaning against the angle formed by the wall and the bookcase.  The half-serious, half-provocative intensity of his blue eyes under the brow which drooped forward contrasted with the careless, well-appointed ease of his general attitude and dress.