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 to his eating remarkably well-royally.  Rosamund’s more than half-cynical ideas of men, and her custom of wringing unanimous verdicts from a jury of temporary impressions, inclined her to imagine him a lover that had not to be so very much condoled with, and a politician less alarming in practice than in theory:—­somewhat a gentleman of domestic tirades on politics:  as it is observed of your generous young Radical of birth and fortune, that he will become on the old high road to a round Conservatism.

He pitched one of the morning papers to the floor in disorderly sheets, muttering:  ‘So they’re at me!’

‘Is Dr. Shrapnel better?’ she asked.  ’I hold to a good appetite as a sign of a man’s recovery.’

Beauchamp was confronting the fog at the window.  He swung round:  ’Dr. Shrapnel is better.  He has a particularly clever young female cook.’

‘Ah! then . . .’

’Yes, then, naturally!  He would naturally hasten to recover to partake of the viands, ma’am.’

Rosamund murmured of her gladness that he should be able to enjoy them.

‘Oddly enough, he is not an eater of meat,’ said Beauchamp.

‘A vegetarian!’