Alice had pondered over Mr. Hoddam’s confessions and was prepared to receive the visitor with coldness.  The vigorous little democrat in her hated arrogance.  Before, if she had asked herself what type on earth she hated most, she would have decided for the unscrupulous, proud man.  And yet this Lewis must be lovable.  That brown face had infinite attractiveness, and she trusted Lady Manorwater’s acuteness and goodness of heart.

Lord Manorwater had gone off on some matter of business and taken the younger Miss Afflint with him.  As Alice looked round the little assembly on the lawn, she felt for the first time the insignificance of the men.  The large Mr. Stocks was not at his best in such surroundings.  He was the typical townsman, and bore with him wherever he went an atmosphere of urban dust and worry.  He hungered for ostentation, he could only talk well when he felt that he impressed his hearers; Bertha, who was not easily impressed, he shunned like a plague.  The man, reflected the censorious Alice, had no shades or half-tones in his character; he was all bald, strong, and crude.  Now he was talking to his hostess with the grace of the wise man unbending.

“I shall be pleased indeed to meet your nephew,” he said.  “I feel sure that we have many interests in common.  Do you say he lives near?”

Lady Manorwater, ever garrulous on family matters, readily enlightened him.  “Etterick is his, and really all the land round here.  We simply live on a patch in the middle of it.  The shooting is splendid, and Lewie is a very keen sportsman.  His mother was my husband’s sister, and died when he was born.  He is wonderfully unspoiled to have had such a lonely boyhood.”

“How did the family get the land?” he asked.  It was a matter which interested him, for democratic politician though he was, he looked always forward to the day when he should own a pleasant country property, and forget the troubles of life in the Nirvana of the respectable.

“Oh, they’ve had it for ages.  They are a very old family, you know, and look down upon us as parvenus.  They have been everything in their day—­soldiers, statesmen, lawyers; and when we were decent merchants in Abbeykirk three centuries ago, they were busy making history.  When you go to Etterick you must see the pictures.  There is a fine one by Jameson of the Haystoun who fought with Montrose, and Raeburn painted most of the Haystouns of his time.  They were a very handsome race, at least the men; the women were too florid and buxom for my taste.”

“And this Lewis—­is he the only one of the family?”

“The very last, and of course he does his best to make away with himself by risking his precious life in Hindu Kush or Tibet or somewhere.”  Her ladyship was geographically vague.

“What a pity he does not realize his responsibilities!” said the politician.  “He might do so much.”

But at the moment it dawned upon the speaker that the skirker of responsibilities was appearing in person.  There strode towards them, across the lawn, a young man and two dogs.