He saw himself as one of the most useless of mortals.  For his sisters’ sake he would have been glad to make money, and one way of doing so was always open to him; he had but to lend his name to company promoters, who again and again had sought him out with tempting proposals.  This, however, Lord Dymchurch disdained; he was fastidious in matters of honour, as on some points of taste.  For the same reason he remained unmarried; a penniless peer in the attitude of wooing seemed to him ridiculous, and in much danger of becoming contemptible.  Loving the life of the country, studious, reserved, he would have liked best of all to withdraw into some rustic hermitage, and leave the world aside but this he looked upon as a temptation to be resisted; there must be duties for him to discharge, if only he could discover them.  So he kept up his old acquaintances, and—­ though rarely made new; he strove to interest himself in practical things, if perchance his opportunity might meet him by the way; and always he did his best to obtain an insight into the pressing questions of the time.  Though in truth of a very liberal mind, he imagined himself a mass of prejudices; his Norman blood (considerably diluted, it is true) sometimes appeared to him as a hereditary taint, constituting an intellectual, perhaps a moral, disability; in certain moods he felt hopelessly out of touch with his age.  To anyone who spoke confidently and hopefully concerning human affairs, Lord Dymchurch gave willing attention.  With Dyce Lashmar he could not feel that he had much in common, but this rather loquacious young man certainly possessed brains, and might have an inkling of truths not easily arrived at.  To-day, at all events, Lashmar’s talk seemed full of matter, and it was none the less acceptable to Lord Dymchurch because of its anti-democratic tenor.

“Not long ago,” he remarked, quietly, “I was reading Marcus Aurelius.  You will remember that the idea of the community of human interests runs through all his thought.  He often insists that a man is nothing apart from the society he belongs to, and that the common good should be our first rule in conduct.  When you were speaking about individualism a sentence of his came into my mind.  ’What is not good for the beehive cannot be good for the bee.’”

“Yes, yes!” cried Dyce, eagerly.  “Thank you very much for reminding me; I had quite forgotten it.”

They were no longer alone in the library; two other men had strolled in, and were seated reading; on this account, Lord Dymchurch subdued his voice even more than usual, for he had a horror of appearing to talk pretentiously, or of talking at all when his words might fall upon indifferent ears.  Respectful of this recognised characteristic, Lashmar turned the conversation for a minute to lighter themes, then rose and moved away.  He felt that he had made an impression, that Lord Dymchurch thought more of him than hitherto, and this sent him forth in buoyant mood.  That evening, economy disregarded, he dined well at a favourite restaurant.