‘Oh, but Mr. Dalmaine,’ protested Paula, ’you couldn’t ask Mr. Egremont to take money at the door!’

’It sounds shocking, Miss Tyrrell, but if Mr. Egremont stands before them as a teacher, he ought to charge for his lessons.  I assure you they would put a far higher value on his lectures.  I grieve to hear that his class has fallen off.  I could have foreseen that.  The basis is not sound.  To put it in plain, even coarse, language, all social reform must be undertaken on strictly commercial principles.’

‘How I should like to hear you say that to Mr. Egremont!’ remarked Paula.  ‘Oh, his face!’

‘Mr. Egremont is an idealist,’ said Mrs. Tyrrell, smiling.

‘Surely the very last kind of person to attempt social reform!’ exclaimed the young married lady.

The conversation drew off into other channels.  Mr. Dalmaine was supplied with the clearest opinions on every topic, and he had a way of delivering them which was most effective with persons of Mrs. Tyrrell’s composition.  In everything he affected sobriety.  If he had to express a severe judgment, it was done with gentlemanly regret.  If he commended anything, he did so with a judicial air.  In fact, it would not have been easy to imagine Mr. Dalmaine speaking with an outburst of natural fervour on any topic whatsoever.  His view was the view of common sense, and he enunciated the barrenest convictions in a tone which would have suited profound originality.

A week later there was a dinner party at the Tyrrells, and Egremont was among the bidden.  He had persisted in his tendency to hold aloof from general society, in spite of many warnings from Mrs. Ormonde, but he could not, short of ingratitude, wholly absent himself from his friends at Lancaster Gate.  Mrs. Tyrrell was no exception to the rule in her attitude to Egremont; as did all matronly ladies, she held him in very warm liking, and sincerely hoped that a young man so admirably fitted for the refinements of social life would in time get rid of his extravagant idealism.  A little of that was graceful; Society was beginning to view it with favour when confined within the proper bounds; but to carry it into act, and waste one’s life in wholly unpractical—­nay, in positively harmful—­enterprise was a sad thing.  She had reasoned with him, but he showed himself so perverted in his sense of the fitness of things that the task had to be abandoned as hopeless.  And yet the good lady liked him.  She had hoped, and not so long ago, that he might some day desire to stand in a nearer relation to her than that of a friend, but herein again she felt that her wish was growing futile.  Paula indulged in hints with reference to her cousin Annabel, and Mrs. Tyrrell began to fear that the strangely educated girl might be the cause of Walter’s extreme aberrations.