Mr. Chiverton turned on Mr. Oliver Smith with his snarl:  “Your conduct as a landowner being above reproach, you can afford to look on with complacency while the rest of the world are being set by the ears.”

Mr. Oliver Smith had very little land, but as all there knew what he had as well as he knew himself, he did not wince.  He rejoined:  “As a class, we have had a long opportunity for winning the confidence of the peasants; some of us have used it—­others of us have neglected it and abused it.  If the people these last have held lordship over revolt and transfer their allegiance to other masters, to demagogues hired in the streets, who shall blame them?”

“Suppose we all rise above reproach:  I mean to try,” said Sir Edward Lucas with an eagerness of interest that showed his good-will.  “Then if my people can find a better master, let them go.”

Mr. Cecil Burleigh turned to the young man:  “It depends upon yourself whether they shall find a better master or not.  Resolve that they shall not.  Consider your duty to the land and those upon it as the vocation of your life, and you will run a worthy career.”

Sir Edward was at once gratified and silenced.  Mr. Cecil Burleigh’s reputation was greater yet than his achievement, but a man’s possibilities impress the young and enthusiastic even more than his successes accomplished.

“You hold subversive views, Burleigh—­views to which the public mind is not educated up, nor will be in this generation,” said Mr. Chiverton.  “The old order of things will last my time.”

“Changes move fast now-a-days,” said Mr. Fairfax.  “I should like to see a constitutional remedy provided for the Giffords of the gentry before I depart.  We are too near neighbors to be friends, and Morte adjoins my property.”

“Gifford was brought up in a bad school—­a vaporing fellow, not true to any of his obligations,” said Mr. Oliver Smith.

“It is Blagg, his agent, who is responsible,” began Mr. Chiverton.

Mr. Oliver Smith interrupted contemptuously:  “When a landlord permits an agent to represent him without supervision, and refuses to look into the reiterated complaints of his tenants, he gives us leave to suppose that his agent does him acceptable service.”

“I have remonstrated with him myself, but he is cynically indifferent to public opinion,” said Mr. Forbes.

“The public opinion that condemns a man and dines with him is not of much account,” said Mr. Oliver Smith, with a glance at Mr. Chiverton, the obnoxious Gifford’s very good friend.

“Would you have him cut?” demanded Mr. Chiverton.  “I grant you that it is a necessary precaution to have his words in black and white if he is to be bound by them—­”

“You could not well say worse of a gentleman than that, Chiverton—­eh?” suggested Mr. Fairfax.