good-will and averse to any changes in their education that might foster an increase of it.  If—­he asked—­landowners were so full of good-will, and so satisfied that they could not be improved in that matter, why had they not already done what was now proposed, and settled the land question?  He himself believed that the land question, like any other, was only capable of settlement through improvement in the spirit of all concerned, but he found it a little difficult to credit Lord Settleham and the rest of the landowners with sincerity in the matter so long as they were unconscious of any need for their own improvement.  According to him, they wanted it both ways, and, so far as he could see, they meant to have it!

His use of the word sincere, in connection with Lord Settleham, was at once pounced on.  He could not know Lord Settleham—­one of the most sincere of men.  Felix freely admitted that he did not, and hastened to explain that he did not question the—­er—­parliamentary sincerity of Lord Settleham and his followers.  He only ventured to doubt whether they realized the hold that human nature had on them.  His experience, he said, of the houses where they had been bred, and the seminaries where they had been trained, had convinced him that there was still a conspiracy on foot to blind Lord Settleham and those others concerning all this; and, since they were themselves part of the conspiracy, there was very little danger of their unmasking it.  At this juncture Felix was felt to have exceeded the limit of fair criticism, and only that toleration toward literary men of a certain reputation, in country houses, as persons brought there to say clever and irresponsible things, prevented people from taking him seriously.

The third section of the guests, unquestionably more static than the others, confined themselves to pointing out that, though the land question was undoubtedly serious, nothing whatever would result from placing any further impositions upon landowners.  For, after all, what was land?  Simply capital invested in a certain way, and very poorly at that.  And what was capital?  Simply a means of causing wages to be paid.  And whether they were paid to men who looked after birds and dogs, loaded your guns, beat your coverts, or drove you to the shoot, or paid to men who ploughed and fertilized the land, what did it matter?  To dictate to a man to whom he was to pay wages was, in the last degree, un-English.  Everybody knew the fate which had come, or was coming, upon capital.  It was being driven out of the country by leaps and bounds—­though, to be sure, it still perversely persisted in yielding every year a larger revenue by way of income tax.  And it would be dastardly to take advantage of land just because it was the only sort of capital which could not fly the country in times of need.  Stanley himself, though—­as became a host—­he spoke little and argued not at all, was distinctly of this faction; and Clara sometimes felt uneasy lest her efforts to focus at Becket all interest in the land question should not quite succeed in outweighing the passivity of her husband’s attitude.  But, knowing that it is bad policy to raise the whip too soon, she trusted to her genius to bring him ‘with one run at the finish,’ as they say, and was content to wait.