car. That woman's face,
those two young heathens--the unconscious Tod!

There was mischief in the air above that little household. But once more
the smooth gliding of the cushioned car, the soft peace of the meadows so
permanently at grass, the churches, mansions, cottages embowered among
their elms, the slow-flapping flight of the rooks and crows lulled Felix
to quietude, and the faint far muttering of that thunder died away.

Nedda was in the drive when he returned, gazing at a nymph set up there
by Clara. It was a good thing, procured from Berlin, well known for
sculpture, and beginning to green over already, as though it had been
there a long time--a pretty creature with shoulders drooping, eyes
modestly cast down, and a sparrow perching on her head.

"Well, Dad?"

"They're coming."

"When?"

"On Tuesday--the youngsters, only."

"You might tell me a little about them."

But Felix only smiled. His powers of description faltered before that
task; and, proud of those powers, he did not choose to subject them to
failure.

CHAPTER VIII

Not till three o'clock that Saturday did the Bigwigs begin to come. Lord
and Lady Britto first from Erne by car; then Sir Gerald and Lady
Malloring, also by car from Joyfields; an early afternoon train brought
three members of the Lower House, who liked a round of golf--Colonel
Martlett, Mr. Sleesor, and Sir John Fanfar--with their wives; also Miss
Bawtrey, an American who went everywhere; and Moorsome, the
landscape-painter, a short, very heavy man who went nowhere, and that in
almost perfect silence, which he afterward avenged. By a train almost
sure to bring no one else came Literature in Public Affairs, alone, Henry
Wiltram, whom some believed to have been the very first to have ideas
about the land. He was followed in the last possible train by Cuthcott,
the advanced editor, in his habitual hurry, and Lady Maude Ughtred in her
beauty. Clara was pleased, and said to Stanley, while dressing, that
almost every shade of opinion about the land was represented this
week-end. She was not, she said, afraid of anything, if she could keep
Henry Wiltram and Cuthcott apart. The House of Commons men would, of
course, be all right. Stanley assented: "They'll be 'fed up' with talk.
But how about Britto--he can sometimes be very nasty, and Cuthcott's been
pretty rough on him, in his rag."

Clara had remembered that, and she was putting Lady Maude on one side of
Cuthcott