class, of knowing thoroughly the more patent side of public
affairs; armoured by the tradition of a culture demanded by leadership;
inspired by ideas, but always the same ideas; owning no master, but in
servitude to her own custom of leading, she had a mind, formidable as the
two-edged swords wielded by her ancestors the Fitz-Harolds, at Agincourt
or Poitiers--a mind which had ever instinctively rejected that inner
knowledge of herself or of the selves of others; produced by those
foolish practices of introspection, contemplation, and understanding, so
deleterious to authority. If Lord Valleys was the body of the
aristocratic machine, Lady Casterley was the steel spring inside it. All
her life studiously unaffected and simple in attire; of plain and frugal
habit; an early riser; working at something or other from morning till
night, and as little worn-out at seventy-eight as most women of fifty,
she had only one weak spot--and that was her strength--blindness as to
the nature and size of her place in the scheme of things. She was a
type, a force.

Wonderfully well she went with the room in which they were dining, whose
grey walls, surmounted by a deep frieze painted somewhat in the style of
Fragonard, contained many nymphs and roses now rather dim; with the
furniture, too, which had a look of having survived into times not its
own. On the tables were no flowers, save five lilies in an old silver
chalice; and on the wall over the great sideboard a portrait of the late
Lord Casterley.

She spoke:

"I hope Miltoun is taking his own line?"

"That's the trouble. He suffers from swollen principles--only wish he
could keep them out of his speeches."

"Let him be; and get him away from that woman as soon as his election's
over. What is her real name?"

"Mrs. something Lees Noel."

"How long has she been there?"

"About a year, I think."

"And you don't know anything about her?"

Lord Valleys raised his shoulders.

"Ah!" said Lady Casterley; "exactly! You're letting the thing drift. I
shall go down myself. I suppose Gertrude can have me? What has that Mr.
Courtier to do with this good lady?"

Lord Valleys smiled. In this smile was the whole of his polite and
easy-going philosophy. "I am no meddler," it seemed to say; and at sight
of that smile Lady Casterley tightened her lips.

"He is a firebrand," she said. "I read that book of his against
War--most inflammatory. Aimed at Grant-and Rosenstern, chie