tep from her drawing-room window, over the flower-beds,
down the gravel walk to the hard, and be on board her yacht within seven
minutes, out on her salt-water lake within twenty, closing her wings in a
French harbour by nightfall of a summer's day, whenever she had the whim
to fly abroad. Of these enviable privileges she boasted with some happy
pride.

'It's the finest yachting-station in England,' said Beauchamp.

She expressed herself very glad that he should like it so much.
Unfortunately she added, 'I hope you will find it pleasanter to be here
than canvassing.'

'I have no pleasure in canvassing,' said he. 'I canvass poor men
accustomed to be paid for their votes, and who get nothing from me but
what the baron would call a parsonical exhortation. I'm in the thick of
the most spiritless crew in the kingdom. Our southern men will not
compare with the men of the north. But still, even among these fellows, I
see danger for the country if our commerce were to fail, if distress came
on them. There's always danger in disunion. That's what the rich won't
see. They see simply nothing out of their own circle; and they won't take
a thought of the overpowering contrast between their luxury and the way
of living, that's half-starving, of the poor. They understand it when
fever comes up from back alleys and cottages, and then they join their
efforts to sweep the poor out of the district. The poor are to get to
their work anyhow, after a long morning's walk over the proscribed space;
for we must have poor, you know. The wife of a parson I canvassed
yesterday, said to me, "Who is to work for us, if you do away with the
poor, Captain Beauchamp?"'

Cecilia quitted her bower and traversed the wood silently.

'So you would blow up my poor Mount Laurels for a peace-offering to the
lower classes?'

'I should hope to put it on a stronger foundation, Cecilia.'

'By means of some convulsion?'

'By forestalling one.'

'That must be one of the new ironclads,' observed Cecilia, gazing at the
black smoke-pennon of a tower that slipped along the water-line. 'Yes?
You were saying? Put us on a stronger----?'

'It's, I think, the Hastings: she broke down the other day on her trial
trip,' said Beauchamp, watching the ship's progress animatedly. 'Peppel
commands her--a capital officer. I suppose we must have these costly big
floating barracks. I don't like to hear of everything being done for the
defensive. The defensive is perilous pol