grossly confused with mere material gain.  At length we see the Conservative reaction in full swing, and who knows where it will land us?  It seems to be leading to the vulgarest and most unintelligent form of chauvinism.  In politics our need now is of brains.  A stupid routine, or a rowdy excitability, had taken the place of the old progressive Liberalism, which kept ever in view the prime interests of civilisation.  We want men with brains.”

“Exactly,” fell from Mr. Breakspeare, who began to eye the young man with interest.  “It’s what I’ve been preaching, in season and out of season, for the last ten years.  I heartily agree with you.”

“Look at Hollingford,” remarked the hostess, smiling grimly.

“Just so!” exclaimed the editor.  “Look at Hollingford!  True, it was never a centre of Liberalism, but the Liberals used to make a good fight, and they had so much intelligence on their side that the town could not sink into utter dulness.  What do we see now?” He raised his hand and grew rhetorical.  “The crassest Toryism sweeping all before it, and everywhere depositing its mud—­which chokes and does not fertilise.  We have athletic clubs, we have a free library, we are better drained and cleaner and healthier and more bookish, with all, than in the old times; but for politics—­alas!  A base level of selfish and purblind materialism—­personified by Robb!”

At the name of the borough member, Lady Ogram’s dark eyes flashed.

“Ah, Robb,” interjected Lashmar.  “Tell me something about Robb.  I know hardly anything of him.”

“Picture to yourself,” returned the editor, with slow emphasis, “a man who at his best was only a stolid country banker, and who now is sunk into fatuous senility.  I hardly know whether I dare trust myself to speak of Robb, for I confess that he has become to me an abstraction rather than a human being—­an embodiment of all the vicious routine, the foul obscurantism, the stupid prejudice, which an enlightened Liberalism has to struggle against.  There he sits, a satire on our parliamentary system.  He can’t put together three sentences; he never in his life had an idea.  The man is a mere money-sack, propped up by toadies and imbeciles.  Has any other borough such a contemptible representative?  I perspire with shame and anger when I think of him!”

Dyce asked himself how much of this vehemence was genuine, how much assumed to gratify their hostess.  Was Mr. Breakspeare inwardly laughing at himself and the company?  But he seemed to be an excitable little man, and possibly believed what he said.

“That’s very interesting,” Dyce remarked.  “And how much longer will Hollingford be content with such representation?”

“I think,” replied Breakspeare, gravely, “I really think, that at the next election we shall floor him.  It is the hope of my life.  For that I toil; for that I sacrifice leisure and tranquillity and most of the things dear to a man philosophically inclined.  Can I but see Robb cast down, I shall withdraw from the arena and hum (I have no voice) my Nunc dimittis.”