should be the charge of Government.  Cecilia had surrendered the lead to him, and was forced to subscribe to an equivalent of ‘undoubtedly’ the Tories just as little as the Liberals had done these good offices.  Party against party, neither of them had a forethoughtful head for the land at large.  They waited for the Press to spur a great imperial country to be but defensively armed, and they accepted the so-called volunteers, with a nominal one-month’s drill per annum, as a guarantee of defence!

Beauchamp startled her, actually kindled her mind to an activity of wonder and regret, with the statement of how much Government, acting with some degree of farsightedness, might have won to pay the public debt and remit taxation, by originally retaining the lines of railway, and fastening on the valuable land adjoining stations.  Hundreds of millions of pounds!

She dropped a sigh at the prodigious amount, but inquired, ’Who has calculated it?’

For though perfectly aware that this kind of conversation was a special compliment paid to her by her friend Nevil, and dimly perceiving that it implied something beyond a compliment-in fact, that it was his manner of probing her for sympathy, as other men would have conducted the process preliminary to deadly flattery or to wooing, her wits fenced her heart about; the exercise of shrewdness was an instinct of self-preservation.  She had nothing but her poor wits, daily growing fainter, to resist him with.  And he seemed to know it, and therefore assailed them, never trying at the heart.

That vast army of figures might be but a phantom army conjured out of the Radical mists, might it not? she hinted.  And besides, we cannot surely require a Government to speculate in the future, can we?

Possibly not, as Governments go, Beauchamp said.

But what think you of a Government of landowners decreeing the enclosure of millions of acres of common land amongst themselves; taking the property of the people to add to their own!  Say, is not that plunder?  Public property, observe; decreed to them by their own law-making, under the pretence that it was being reclaimed for cultivation, when in reality it has been but an addition to their pleasure-grounds:  a flat robbery of pasture from the poor man’s cow and goose, and his right of cutting furze for firing.  Consider that!  Beauchamp’s eyes flashed democratic in reciting this injury to the objects of his warm solicitude—­the man, the cow, and the goose.  But so must he have looked when fronting England’s enemies, and his aspect of fervour subdued Cecilia.  She confessed her inability to form an estimate of such conduct.

‘Are they doing it still?’ she asked.

’We owe it to Dr. Shrapnel foremost that there is now a watch over them to stop them.  But for him, Grancey Lespel would have enclosed half of Northeden Heath.  As it is, he has filched bits here and there, and he will have to put back his palings.’