Carton nodded a little more hopefully.  His eyes were fixed now upon Maraton.

“Can’t think how the fellow learnt to turn himself out like that.  I thought these sort of people dressed anyhow.”

Lady Grenside shrugged her shoulders.

“I believe,” she said, “that this man is full of queer contradictions.  Some one once told me that he was enormously wealthy; that he had been to an English public school and changed his name out in America.  Rubbish, I expect. . . .  Run and find Lily, there’s a dear boy.  We are going in now.”

Dinner was served at a round table, and a good deal of the conversation was general.  On Maraton’s left hand, however, was a lady whose horror at his presence, concealed out of deference to her host, reduced her to stolid and unbending silence.  Elisabeth, quickly aware of the fact, made swift atonement.  While the others talked all around them of general subjects, she conversed with Maraton almost in whispers, lightly enough at first, but with an undernote of seriousness always there.  Maraton would have been less than human if he had not been susceptible to the charm of her conversation.

“I cannot tell you,” she declared, towards the end of the meal, “how much I am hoping from this brief visit of yours.  I know you feel that our class has little feeling for the people whom you represent.  If only I could convince you how wrong that idea is!  Nothing has interested me so much as the different measures which have been brought in for the sake of the people.  And my uncle, too—­he is the kindest of men and very broad.  He would go even further than he does, but for his colleagues.”

“He goes a long way,” Maraton reminded her, “when he asks me to his home; invites me—­well, why should I not say it?—­invites me to join his party.”

“He is doing what he believes is sensible,” she went on eagerly.  “He is doing what I know is right.  It is the best, the most splendid idea he has ever had.  I think that if nothing comes of it,” she added, leaning forward so that her eyes met his, “I think that if nothing comes of it, it will break my heart.”

Maraton was a little more serious for a few minutes.  She waited in some anxiety for him to speak.  When he did so, she realised that there was a new gravity in his face and in his tone.

“Lady Elisabeth,” he said, “I am afraid that there is very little hope of our coming to any agreement.  You must remember that when I promised to come here—­”

“Oh, I know that!” she interrupted.  “Only I wish that we had a little longer time.  You think that my interest in the people is an amateurish affair, half sentimental and half freakish, don’t you?  You were probably surprised to hear that I had ever read a volume of political economy in my life.  But I have.  I have studied things.  I have read dozens and dozens of books on Sociology, and Socialism, and Syndicalism, and every conceivable subject that bears upon the relations between your class and ours, and I can’t come to any but one conclusion.  There is only one logical conclusion.  Violent methods are useless.  The betterment of the poor must come about gradually.  If religion hadn’t interfered, things would have been far better now, even.”