“That is perhaps not an impossible thing,” she said, meditatively.  “More unlikely things have come to pass.”

“Then it does seem to you unlikely?”

“I think we won’t discuss it just now.—­You see, from here, the plan of the gardens and the park.  Perhaps you would like to walk there a little, before going back to Hollingford?”

This was a dismissal, and Dyce accepted it.  They went downstairs together, and in the hall parted, with more friendliness on Constance’s side than she had hitherto shown.  Dyce did not care to linger in the grounds.  He strolled awhile about the village, glancing over the pamphlet with its report of last year’s business at the mill, and the local improvements consequent upon it, then returned on foot to Hollingford, where he arrived with an excellent appetite for dinner.

CHAPTER VI

Wind and rain interfered with Lashmar’s project for the early morning.  He had meant to ramble about the town for an hour before going out to Shawe.  Unable to do this, he bought half-a-dozen newspapers, and read all the leading articles and the political news with close attention.  As a rule, this kind of study had little attraction for him; he was anything but well-informed on current politics; he understood very imperfectly the British constitution, and had still less insight into the details of party organisation and conflict.  All that kind of thing he was wont to regard as unworthy of his scrutiny.  For him, large ideas, world-embracing theories, the philosophy of civilisation.  Few Englishmen had a smaller endowment of practical ability; few, on the other hand, delighted as he did in speculative system, or could grasp and exhibit in such lucid entirety hypothetical laws.  Much as he talked of science, he was lacking in several essentials of the scientific mind; he had neither patience to collect and observe facts, nor conscientiousness in reasoning upon them; prejudice directed his every thought, and egoism pervaded all his conclusions.  Excelling in speciousness, it was natural that he should think success as a politician within his easy reach; possessed by a plausible theory of government, he readily conceived himself on the heights of statesmanship, ruling the nation for its behoof.  And so, as he read the London and provincial papers this morning, they had all at once a new interest for him; he probed questions, surveyed policies, and whilst smiling at the intellectual poverty of average man, gravely marked for himself a shining course amid the general confusion and ineptitude.