, who in general never went into society, were asked to a
quiet dinner in Bedford Square, and came. Then, of course, it appeared
that Robert, with the idealist's blindness, had forgotten a hundred
small differences of temperament and training which must make it
impossible for Catherine, in a state of tension, to see the hero in
James Wardlaw. It was an unlucky dinner. James Wardlaw, with all his
heroisms and virtues, had long ago dropped most of those delicate
intuitions and divinations, which make the charm of life in society,
along the rough paths of a strenuous philanthropy. He had no tact, and,
like most saints, he drew a certain amount of inspiration from a
contented ignorance of his neighbour's point of view. Also, he was not a
man who made much of women, and he held strong views as to the
subordination of wives. It never occurred to him that Robert might have
a Dissenter in his own household, and as, in spite of their speculative
differences, he had always been accustomed to talk freely with Robert,
he now talked freely to Robert plus his wife, assuming, as every good
Comtist does, that the husband is the wife's pope.

Moreover, a solitary eccentric life, far from the society of his equals,
had developed in him a good many crude Jacobinisms. His experience of
London clergymen, for instance, had not been particularly favourable,
and he had a store of anecdotes on the subject which Robert had heard
before, but which now, repeated in Catherine's presence, seemed to have
lost every shred of humour they once possessed. Poor Elsmere tried with
all his might to divert the stream, but it showed a tormenting tendency
to recur to the same channel. And meanwhile the little spectacled wife,
dressed in a high home-made cashmere, sat looking at her husband with a
benevolent and smiling admiration. _She_ kept all her eloquence for the
poor.

After dinner things grew worse. Mrs. Wardlaw had recently presented her
husband with a third infant, and the ardent pair had taken advantage of
the visit to London of an eminent French Comtist to have it baptized
with full Comtist rites. Wardlaw stood astride on the rug, giving the
assembled company a minute account of the ceremony observed, while his
wife threw in gentle explanatory interjections. The manner of both
showed a certain exasperating confidence, if not in the active sympathy,
at least in the impartial curiosity of their audience, and in the
importance to modern religious histo