er aegis, should be laid the foundation-stone of the real scheme,
whatever it might be, that should regenerate 'the Land.' Stanley would
only have laughed; even though it would be bound to make him Lord
Freeland when it came to be known some day. . . .

To the eyes and ears of Nedda that evening at dinner, all was new indeed,
and all wonderful. It was not that she was unaccustomed to society or to
conversation, for to their house at Hampstead many people came, uttering
many words, but both the people and the words were so very different.
After the first blush, the first reconnaissance of the two Bigwigs
between whom she sat, her eyes WOULD stray and her ears would only half
listen to them. Indeed, half her ears, she soon found out, were quite
enough to deal with Colonel Martlett and Sir John Fanfar. Across the
azaleas she let her glance come now and again to anchor on her father's
face, and exchanged with him a most enjoyable blink. She tried once or
twice to get through to Alan, but he was always eating; he looked very
like a young Uncle Stanley this evening.

What was she feeling? Short, quick stabs of self-consciousness as to how
she was looking; a sort of stunned excitement due to sheer noise and the
number of things offered to her to eat and drink; keen pleasure in the
consciousness that Colonel Martlett and Sir John Fanfar and other men,
especially that nice one with the straggly moustache who looked as if he
were going to bite, glanced at her when they saw she wasn't looking. If
only she had been quite certain that it was not because they thought her
too young to be there! She felt a sort of continual exhilaration, that
this was the great world--the world where important things were said and
done, together with an intense listening expectancy, and a sense most
unexpected and almost frightening, that nothing important was being said
or would be done. But this she knew to be impudent. On Sunday evenings
at home people talked about a future existence, about Nietzsche, Tolstoy,
Chinese pictures, post-impressionism, and would suddenly grow hot and
furious about peace, and Strauss, justice, marriage, and De Maupassant,
and whether people were losing their souls through materialism, and
sometimes one of them would get up and walk about the room. But to-night
the only words she could catch were the names of two politicians whom
nobody seemed to approve of, except that nice one who was going to bite.
Once very