ever instinctively rejected that inner knowledge of herself or of the selves of others; produced by those foolish practices of introspection, contemplation, and understanding, so deleterious to authority.  If Lord Valleys was the body of the aristocratic machine, Lady Casterley was the steel spring inside it.  All her life studiously unaffected and simple in attire; of plain and frugal habit; an early riser; working at something or other from morning till night, and as little worn-out at seventy-eight as most women of fifty, she had only one weak spot—­and that was her strength—­blindness as to the nature and size of her place in the scheme of things.  She was a type, a force.

Wonderfully well she went with the room in which they were dining, whose grey walls, surmounted by a deep frieze painted somewhat in the style of Fragonard, contained many nymphs and roses now rather dim; with the furniture, too, which had a look of having survived into times not its own.  On the tables were no flowers, save five lilies in an old silver chalice; and on the wall over the great sideboard a portrait of the late Lord Casterley.

She spoke: 

“I hope Miltoun is taking his own line?”

“That’s the trouble.  He suffers from swollen principles—­only wish he could keep them out of his speeches.”

“Let him be; and get him away from that woman as soon as his election’s over.  What is her real name?”

“Mrs. something Lees Noel.”

“How long has she been there?”

“About a year, I think.”

“And you don’t know anything about her?”

Lord Valleys raised his shoulders.

“Ah!” said Lady Casterley; “exactly!  You’re letting the thing drift.  I shall go down myself.  I suppose Gertrude can have me?  What has that Mr. Courtier to do with this good lady?”

Lord Valleys smiled.  In this smile was the whole of his polite and easy-going philosophy.  “I am no meddler,” it seemed to say; and at sight of that smile Lady Casterley tightened her lips.

“He is a firebrand,” she said.  “I read that book of his against War—­most inflammatory.  Aimed at Grant-and Rosenstern, chiefly.  I’ve just seen, one of the results, outside my own gates.  A mob of anti-War agitators.”

Lord Valleys controlled a yawn.

“Really?  I’d no idea Courtier had any influence.”

“He is dangerous.  Most idealists are negligible-his book was clever.”

“I wish to goodness we could see the last of these scares, they only make both countries look foolish,” muttered Lord Valleys.

Lady Casterley raised her glass, full of a bloody red wine.  “The war would save us,” she said.

“War is no joke.”

“It would be the beginning of a better state of things.”

“You think so?”

“We should get the lead again as a nation, and Democracy would be put back fifty years.”

Lord Valleys made three little heaps of salt, and paused to count them; then, with a slight uplifting of his eyebrows, which seemed to doubt what he was going to say, he murmured:  “I should have said that we were all democrats nowadays....  What is it, Clifton?”