“We must all remember,” said Lord Maxwell, getting up and beginning to walk up and down beside them, “that Aldous is in no way dependent upon me.  He has his own resources.  He could leave us to-morrow.  Dependent on me!  It is the other way, I think, Agneta—­don’t you?”

He stopped and looked at her, and she returned his look in spite of herself.  A tear dropped on her stocking which she hastily brushed away.

“Come, now,” said Lord Maxwell, seating himself; “let us talk it over rationally.  Don’t go, Lady Winterbourne.”

“Why, they may be settling it at this moment,” cried Miss Raeburn, half-choked, and feeling as though “the skies were impious not to fall.”

“No, no!” he said smiling.  “Not yet, I think.  But let us prepare ourselves.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile the cause of all this agitation was sitting languidly in a great Louis Quinze chair in the picture gallery upstairs, with Aldous beside her.  She had taken off her big hat as though it oppressed her, and her black head lay against a corner of the chair in fine contrast to its mellowed golds and crimsons.  Opposite to her were two famous Holbein portraits, at which she looked from time to time as though attracted to them in spite of herself, by some trained sense which could not be silenced.  But she was not communicative, and Aldous was anxious.

“Do you think I was rude to your grandfather?” she asked him at last abruptly, cutting dead short some information she had stiffly asked him for just before, as to the date of the gallery and its collection.

“Rude!” he said startled.  “Not at all.  Not in the least.  Do you suppose we are made of such brittle stuff, we poor landowners, that we can’t stand an argument now and then?”

“Your aunt thought I was rude,” she said unheeding.  “I think I was.  But a house like this excites me.”  And with a little reckless gesture she turned her head over her shoulder and looked down the gallery.  A Velasquez was beside her; a great Titian over the way; a priceless Rembrandt beside it.  On her right hand stood a chair of carved steel, presented by a German town to a German emperor, which, had not its equal in Europe; the brocade draping the deep windows in front of her had been specially made to grace a state visit to the house of Charles II.

“At Mellor,” she went on, “we are old and tumble-down.  The rain comes in; there are no shutters to the big hall, and we can’t afford to put them—­we can’t afford even to have the pictures cleaned.  I can pity the house and nurse it, as I do the village.  But here—­”

And looking about her, she gave a significant shrug.

“What—­our feathers again!” he said laughing.  “But consider.  Even you allow that Socialism cannot begin to-morrow.  There must be a transition time, and clearly till the State is ready to take over the historical houses and their contents, the present nominal owners of them are bound, if they can, to take care of them.  Otherwise the State will be some day defrauded.”