“I felt ashamed,” he added, “to find you with people like the Barkers.  Do you mean to say they don’t disgust you?”

“They are not so bad as that,” Iris weakly protested.  “But you mustn’t think I regard them as intimate friends.  It’s only that—­ I’ve been rather lonely lately.  Len away at school—­and several things—­”

“Yes, yes, I understand.  But they’re no company for you.  Do get away as soon as possible.”

Another couple went by them talking loudly the same vernacular.

“If I put a book down for a day,” said the young woman, “I forget all I’ve read.  I’ve a hawful bad memory for readin’.”

“How I loathe that class!” Lashmar exclaimed.  “I never came to this part of the coast, because I knew it was defiled by them.  For heaven’s sake, get away t Go to some place where your ears won’t be perpetually outraged.  I can’t bear to think of leaving you here.”

“I’ll go as soon as ever I can—­I promise you,” murmured Iris.  “There!  It really is beginning to rain.  We must walk quickly.”

“Will you take my arm?”

She did so, and they hurried on.

“That’s the democracy,” said Lashmar.  “Those are the people for whom we are told that the world exists.  They get money, and it gives them power.  Meanwhile, the true leaders of mankind, as often as not, struggle through their lives in poverty and neglect.”

Iris’s voice sounded timidly.

“You would feel it of no use to have just enough for independence?”

“For the present,” he replied, “it would be all I ask.  But I might just as well ask for ten thousand a year.”

The rain was beating upon them.  During the ascent to Sunrise Terrace, neither spoke a word.  At the door of her lodgings, Iris looked into her companion’s face, and said in a tremulous voice: 

“I am sure you will be elected!  I’m certain of it!”

Dyce laughed, pressed her hand, and, as the door opened, walked away through the storm.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Lord Dymchurch went down into Somerset.  His younger sister was in a worse state of health than he had been led to suppose; there could be no thought of removing her from home.  A day or two later, her malady took a hopeless turn, and by the end of the week she was dead.

A month after this, the surviving daughter of the house, seeking solace in the ancient faith to which she had long inclined, joined a religious community.  Dymchurch was left alone.

Since his abrupt departure from Rivenoak, he had lived a silent life, spending the greater part of every day in solitude.  Grief was not sufficient to account for the heaviness and muteness which had fallen upon him, or for the sudden change by which his youthful-looking countenance had become that of a middle-aged man.  He seemed to shrink before eyes that regarded him, however kind their expression; one might have thought