“I was speaking down in Leicestershire the other day on this subject,” continued Henry, “and I pointed out at some length a thing that few people ever stop to consider—­”

Francesca went over immediately but decorously to the majority that will not stop to consider.

“Did you come across any of the Barnets when you were down there?” she interrupted; “Eliza Barnet is rather taken up with all those subjects.”

In the propagandist movements of Sociology, as in other arenas of life and struggle, the fiercest competition and rivalry is frequently to be found between closely allied types and species.  Eliza Barnet shared many of Henry Greech’s political and social views, but she also shared his fondness for pointing things out at some length; there had been occasions when she had extensively occupied the strictly limited span allotted to the platform oratory of a group of speakers of whom Henry Greech had been an impatient unit.  He might see eye to eye with her on the leading questions of the day, but he persistently wore mental blinkers as far as her estimable qualities were concerned, and the mention of her name was a skilful lure drawn across the trail of his discourse; if Francesca had to listen to his eloquence on any subject she much preferred that it should be a disparagement of Eliza Barnet rather than the prevention of destitution.

“I’ve no doubt she means well,” said Henry, “but it would be a good thing if she could be induced to keep her own personality a little more in the background, and not to imagine that she is the necessary mouthpiece of all the progressive thought in the countryside.  I fancy Canon Besomley must have had her in his mind when he said that some people came into the world to shake empires and others to move amendments.”

Francesca laughed with genuine amusement.

“I suppose she is really wonderfully well up in all the subjects she talks about,” was her provocative comment.

Henry grew possibly conscious of the fact that he was being drawn out on the subject of Eliza Barnet, and he presently turned on to a more personal topic.

“From the general air of tranquillity about the house I presume Comus has gone back to Thaleby,” he observed.

“Yes,” said Francesca, “he went back yesterday.  Of course, I’m very fond of him, but I bear the separation well.  When he’s here it’s rather like having a live volcano in the house, a volcano that in its quietest moments asks incessant questions and uses strong scent.”

“It is only a temporary respite,” said Henry; “in a year or two he will be leaving school, and then what?”

Francesca closed her eyes with the air of one who seeks to shut out a distressing vision.  She was not fond of looking intimately at the future in the presence of another person, especially when the future was draped in doubtfully auspicious colours.

“And then what?” persisted Henry.