" said Mr. Pole, "that we should have a crop
of--eh?"

"The average?" Sir Twickenham asked, on the evident upward mounting of a
sum in his brain. And then, with a relaxing look upon Cornelia: "Perhaps
you might have fifteen, sixteen, perhaps for the first year; or, say--you
see, the exact acreage is unknown to me. Say roughly, ten thousand sacks
the first year."

"Of what?" inquired Cornelia.

"Mangold-wurzel," said the baronet.

She gazed about her. Mr. Barrett was gone.

"But, no doubt, you take no interest in such reckonings?" Sir Twickenham
added.

"On the contrary, I take every interest in practical details."

Practical men believe this when they hear it from the lips of
gentlewomen, and without philosophically analyzing the fact that it is
because the practical quality possesses simply the fascination of a form
of strength. Sir Twickenham pursued his details. Day closed on Brookfield
blankly. Nevertheless, the ladies felt that the situation was now
dignified by tragic feeling, and remembering keenly how they had been
degraded of late, they had a sad enjoyment of the situation.

CHAPTER XVIII

Meantime Wilfrid was leading a town-life and occasionally visiting
Stornley. He was certainly not in love with Lady Charlotte Chillingworth,
but he was in harness to that lady. In love we have some idea whither we
would go: in harness we are simply driven, and the destination may be
anywhere. To be reduced to this condition (which will happen now and then
in the case of very young men who are growing up to something, and is, if
a momentary shame to them, rather a sign of promise than not) the gentle
male need not be deeply fascinated. Lady Charlotte was not a fascinating
person. She did not lay herself out to attract. Had she done so, she
would have failed to catch Wilfrid, whose soul thirsted for poetical
refinement and filmy delicacies in a woman. What she had, and what he
knew that he wanted, and could only at intervals assume by acting as if
he possessed it, was a victorious aplomb, which gave her a sort of
gallant glory in his sight. He could act it well before his sisters, and
here and there a damsel; and coming fresh from Lady Charlotte's school,
he had recently done so with success, and had seen the ladies feel toward
him, as he felt under his instructress in the art. Some nature, however,
is required for every piece of art. Wilfrid knew that he had been brutal
in his representation of the part, and t