ttle and argued not at all, was distinctly of
this faction; and Clara sometimes felt uneasy lest her efforts to focus
at Becket all interest in the land question should not quite succeed in
outweighing the passivity of her husband's attitude. But, knowing that
it is bad policy to raise the whip too soon, she trusted to her genius to
bring him 'with one run at the finish,' as they say, and was content to
wait.

There was universal sympathy with the Mallorings. If a model landlord
like Malloring had trouble with his people, who--who should be immune?
Arson! It was the last word! Felix, who secretly shared Nedda's horror
of the insensate cruelty of flames, listened, nevertheless, to the
jubilation that they had caught the fellow, with profound disturbance.
For the memory of the big laborer seated against the wall, his eyes
haunting round his cell, quarrelled fiercely with his natural abhorrence
of any kind of violence, and his equally natural dislike of what brought
anxiety into his own life--and the life, almost as precious, of his
little daughter. Scarcely a word of the evening's conversation but gave
him in high degree the feeling: How glib all this is, how far from
reality! How fatted up with shell after shell of comfort and security!
What do these people know, what do they realize, of the pressure and beat
of raw life that lies behind--what do even I, who have seen this
prisoner, know? For us it's as simple as killing a rat that eats our
corn, or a flea that sucks our blood. Arson! Destructive brute--lock him
up! And something in Felix said: For order, for security, this may be
necessary. But something also said: Our smug attitude is odious!

He watched his little daughter closely, and several times marked the
color rush up in her face, and once could have sworn he saw tears in her
eyes. If the temper of this talk were trying to him, hardened at a
hundred dinner-tables, what must it be to a young and ardent creature!
And he was relieved to find, on getting to the drawing-room, that she had
slipped behind the piano and was chatting quietly with her Uncle John. .

As to whether this or that man liked her, Nedda perhaps was not more
ignorant than other women; and she had noted a certain warmth and twinkle
in Uncle John's eyes the other evening, a certain rather jolly tendency
to look at her when he should have been looking at the person to whom he
was talking; so that she felt toward him a trustful kindliness