’You heard Cougham, Palmet!  He’s my senior, and I’m obliged to come second to him, and how am I to have a chance when he has drenched the audience for close upon a couple of hours!’

Palmet mimicked the manner of Cougham.

‘They cry for Turbot naturally; they want a relief,’ Beauchamp groaned.

Palmet gave an imitation of Timothy Turbot.

He was an admirable mimic, perfectly spontaneous, without stressing any points, and Beauchamp was provoked to laugh his discontentment with the evening out of recollection.

But a grave matter troubled Palmet’s head.

‘Who was that fellow who walked off with Miss Denham?’

‘A married man,’ said Beauchamp:  ’badly married; more ’s the pity; he has a wife in the madhouse.  His name is Lydiard.’

‘Not her brother!  Where’s her uncle?’

’She won’t let him come to these meetings.  It’s her idea; well-intended, but wrong, I think.  She’s afraid that Dr. Shrapnel will alarm the moderate Liberals and damage Radical me.’

Palmet muttered between his teeth, ’What queer things they let their women do!’ He felt compelled to say, ’Odd for her to be walking home at night with a fellow like that.’

It chimed too consonantly with a feeling of Beauchamp’s, to repress which he replied:  ’Your ideas about women are simply barbarous, Palmet.  Why shouldn’t she?  Her uncle places his confidence in the man, and in her.  Isn’t that better—­ten times more likely to call out the sense of honour and loyalty, than the distrust and the scandal going on in your class?’

‘Please to say yours too.’

’I’ve no class.  I say that the education for women is to teach them to rely on themselves.’

‘Ah! well, I don’t object, if I’m the man.’

’Because you and your set are absolutely uncivilized in your views of women.’

‘Common sense, Beauchamp!’

’Prey.  You eye them as prey.  And it comes of an idle aristocracy.  You have no faith in them, and they repay you for your suspicion.’

’All the same, Beauchamp, she ought not to be allowed to go about at night with that fellow.  “Rich and rare were the gems she wore”:  but that was in Erin’s isle, and if we knew the whole history, she’d better have stopped at home.  She’s marvellously pretty, to my mind.  She looks a high-bred wench.  Odd it is, Beauchamp, to see a lady’s-maid now and then catch the style of my lady.  No, by Jove!  I’ve known one or two—­you couldn’t tell the difference!  Not till you were intimate.  I know one would walk a minuet with a duchess.  Of course—­all the worse for her.  If you see that uncle of Miss Denham’s—­upon my honour, I should advise him:  I mean, counsel him not to trust her with any fellow but you.’

Beauchamp asked Lord Palmet how old he was.

Palmet gave his age; correcting the figures from six-and-twenty to one year more.  ‘And never did a stroke of work in my life,’ he said, speaking genially out of an acute guess at the sentiments of the man he walked with.