“For you Socialists, I daresay!” cried Barton.  “The rest of us know better than to expect a perfect world!”

Boden laughed, the passion dying from his face.

“Ah, well, we shall have to make you march—­you fellows in possession.  No hope—­unless we are ‘behind you with a bradawl!’”

“On the contrary!  We marched before you Socialists were thought of.  Who have put the bulk of the cottages of England in repair during the last half century, I should like to know—­and built most of the new ones?  The landlords of England!  Who stands in the way of reform at the present moment?  The small owner.  And who are the small owners?  Mainly Radical tradesmen.”

Boden looked at him—­then queerly smiled.  “I daresay.  I trust no man—­further than I can see him.  But if what you say is true, why don’t you Conservatives—­in your own interest—­coerce men like Melrose?  He’s giving you away, every month he exists.”

“Well, Tatham’s at it,” said Barton quietly; “we’re all at it.  And there’s a new agent just appointed.  Something to be hoped from him.”

“Who is it?”

“You didn’t hear us discussing him last night?  A man called Claude Faversham.”

“Claude Faversham?  A tall, dark fellow—­writes a little—­does a little law—­but mostly unemployed?  Oh, I know him perfectly.  Faversham?  You don’t mean it!” Boden threw himself back in his chair with a sarcastic lip, and relit his pipe.  As he watched the spirals of smoke he recalled the few incidents of his acquaintance with the young man.  They had both been among the original members of a small club in London, frequented by men of letters and junior barristers.  Faversham had long since dropped out of the club, and was now the companion, so Boden understood, of much richer men, and a great frequenter of the Stock Exchange, where money is mysteriously made without working for it.  That fact alone was enough for Cyril Boden.  He felt an instinctive, almost a fanatical, antipathy toward the new agent.  On the one side the worshippers of the Unbought and the Unpriced; on the other Mammon and all his troop.  It was so that Boden habitually envisaged his generation.  It was so, and by no other test, that he divided the sheep from the goats.

Meanwhile, Lydia Penfold, driving a diminutive pony, was slowly approaching the castle through the avenue of splendid oaks which led up to it.  Faversham was walking beside her.  He had overtaken her at the beginning of the avenue, and had sent on his motor that he might have the pleasure of her society.

The daintiness of her white dress, with all its pretty details, the touch of blue in her hat, and at her waist, delighted his eyes.  It pleased him that there was not a trace in her of Bohemian carelessness in these respects.  Everything was simple, but everything was considered.  She knew her own beauty; that was clear.  It gave her self-possession; but, so far as he could see, without a trace of conceit.  He had never met a young girl with whom he could talk so easily.