“Your tame socialism isn’t equal to the prospect,” he remarked, a little bitterly.

“My tame socialism, as you call it,” she replied, “draws the line at seeing the country governed by one class of person only, and that class the one who has the least at stake in it.”

“Lady Jane,” he said earnestly, “I am glad that I am here to point out to you a colossal mistake from which you and many others are suffering.  The Democrats do not represent Labour only.”

“The small shopkeepers?” she suggested.

“Nothing of the sort,” he replied.  “The influence of my party has spread far deeper and further.  We number amongst our adherents the majority of the professional classes and the majority of the thinking people amongst the community of moderate means.  Why, if you consider the legislation of the last seven or eight years, you will see how they have been driven to embrace some sort of socialism.  Nothing so detestable and short-sighted as our financial policy has ever been known in the history of the world.  The middle classes, meaning by the middle classes professional men and men of moderate means, bore the chief burden of the war.  They submitted to terrible taxation, to many privations, besides the universal gift of their young blood.  We won the war and what was the result?  The wealth of the country, through ghastly legislation, drifted into the hands of the profiteering classes, the wholesale shopkeepers, the ship owners, the factory owners, the mine owners.  The professional man with two thousand a year was able to save a quarter of that before the war.  After the war, taxation demanded that quarter and more for income tax, thrust upon him an increased cost of living, cut the ground from beneath his feet.  It isn’t either of the two extremes—­the aristocrat or the labouring man—­where you must look for the pulse of a country’s prosperity.  It is to the classes in between, and, Lady Jane, they are flocking to our camp just as fast as they can, just as fast as the country is heading for ruin under its present Government.”

“You are very convincing,” she admitted.  “Why have you not spoken so plainly in the House?”

“The moment hasn’t arrived,” Tallente replied.  “There will be a General Election before many months have passed and that will be the end of the present fools’ paradise at St. Stephen’s.”

“And then?”

“We shan’t abuse our power,” he assured her.  “What we aim at is a National Party which will consider the interests of every class.  That is our reading of the term ‘Democrat.’  Our programme is not nearly so revolutionary as you are probably led to believe, but we do mean to smooth away, so far as we can from a practical point of view, the inequalities of life.  We want to sweep away the last remnants of feudalism.”

“Tell me why they were so anxious to gather you into the fold?” she asked.