’Take the rich by the throat and show them in the kitchen-mirror that they’re swine running down to the sea with a devil in them.’  She had set him off again, but she had enticed him to eating.  ’Pooh! it has all been said before.  Stones are easier to move than your English.  May I be forgiven for saying it! an invasion is what they want to bring them to their senses.  I’m sick of the work.  Why should I be denied—­am I to kill the woman I love that I may go on hammering at them?  Their idea of liberty is, an evasion of public duty.  Dr. Shrapnel’s right—­it’s a money-logged Island!  Men like the Earl of Romfrey, who have never done work in their days except to kill bears and birds, I say they’re stifled by wealth:  and he at least would have made an Admiral of mark, or a General:  not of much value, but useful in case of need.  But he, like a pretty woman, was under no obligation to contribute more than an ornamental person to the common good.  As to that, we count him by tens of thousands now, and his footmen and maids by hundreds of thousands.  The rich love the nation through their possessions; otherwise they have no country.  If they loved the country they would care for the people.  Their hearts are eaten up by property.  I am bidden to hold my tongue because I have no knowledge.  When men who have this “knowledge” will go down to the people, speak to them, consult and argue with them, and come into suitable relations with them—­I don’t say of lords and retainers, but of knowers and doers, leaders and followers—­out of consideration for public safety, if not for the common good, I shall hang back gladly; though I won’t hear misstatements.  My fault is, that I am too moderate.  I should respect myself more if I deserved their hatred.  This flood of luxury, which is, as Dr. Shrapnel says, the body’s drunkenness and the soul’s death, cries for execration.  I’m too moderate.  But I shall quit the country:  I’ve no place here.’

Rosamund ahemed.  ’France, Nevil?  I should hardly think that France would please you, in the present state of things over there.’

Half cynically, with great satisfaction, she had watched him fretting at the savoury morsels of her pie with a fork like a sparrow-beak during the monologue that would have been so dreary to her but for her appreciation of the wholesome effect of the letting off of steam, and her admiration of the fire of his eyes.  After finishing his plate he had less the look of a ship driving on to reef—­some of his images of the country.  He called for claret and water, sighing as he munched bread in vast portions, evidently conceiving that to eat unbuttered bread was to abstain from luxury.  He praised passingly the quality of the bread.  It came from Steynham, and so did the, milk and cream, the butter, chicken and eggs.  He was good enough not to object to the expenditure upon the transmission of the accustomed dainties.  Altogether the gradual act of nibbling had conduced