“No, not at all!” she exclaimed, both her vanity and her enthusiasm roused by his manner.  “Both my judgment and my conscience make me a Socialist.  It’s only one’s wretched love for one’s own little luxuries and precedences—­the worst part of one—­that makes me waver, makes me a traitor!  The people I worked with in London would think me a traitor often, I know.”

“And you really think that the world ought to be ’hatched over again and hatched different’?  That it ought to be, if it could be?”

“I think that things are intolerable as they are,” she broke out, after a pause.  “The London poor were bad enough; the country poor seem to me worse!  How can any one believe that such serfdom and poverty—­such mutilation of mind and body—­were meant to go on for ever!”

Lord Maxwell’s brows lifted.  But it certainly was no wonder that Aldous should find those eyes of hers superb?

“Can you really imagine, my dear young lady,” he asked her mildly, “that if all property were divided to-morrow the force of natural inequality would not have undone all the work the day after, and given us back our poor?”

The “newspaper cant” of this remark, as the Cravens would have put it, brought a contemptuous look for an instant into the girl’s face.  She began to talk eagerly and cleverly, showing a very fair training in the catch words of the school, and a good memory—­as one uncomfortable person at the table soon perceived—­for some of the leading arguments and illustrations of a book of Venturist Essays which had lately been much read and talked of in London.

Then, irritated more and more by Lord Maxwell’s gentle attention, and the interjections he threw in from time to time, she plunged into history, attacked the landowning class, spoke of the Statute of Labourers, the Law of Settlement, the New Poor Law, and other great matters, all in the same quick flow of glancing, picturesque speech, and all with the same utter oblivion—­so it seemed to her stiff indignant hostess at the other end of the table—­of the manners and modesty proper to a young girl in a strange house, and that young girl Richard Boyce’s daughter!

Aldous struck in now and then, trying to soothe her by supporting her to a certain extent, and so divert the conversation.  But Marcella was soon too excited to be managed; and she had her say; a very strong say often as far as language went:  there could be no doubt of that.

“Ah, well,” said Lord Maxwell, wincing at last under some of her phrases, in spite of his courteous savoir-faire, “I see you are of the same opinion as a good man whose book I took up yesterday:  ’The landlords of England have always shown a mean and malignant passion for profiting by the miseries of others?’ Well, Aldous, my boy, we are judged, you and I—­no help for it!”

The man whose temper and rule had made the prosperity of a whole country side for nearly forty years, looked at his grandson with twinkling eyes.  Miss Raeburn was speechless.  Lady Winterbourne was absently staring at Marcella, a spot of red on each pale cheek.