her to shield her from harm.

The same fanaticism, which looked on his passion as a flower by itself,
entirely apart from its suitability to the social garden, was also the
driving force which sent him up to London to declare his intention to his
father before he spoke to Mrs. Noel. The thing should be done simply,
and in right order. For he had the kind of moral courage found in those
who live retired within the shell of their own aspirations. Yet it was
not perhaps so much active moral courage as indifference to what others
thought or did, coming from his inbred resistance to the appreciation of
what they felt.

That peculiar smile of the old Tudor Cardinal--which had in it invincible
self-reliance, and a sort of spiritual sneer--played over his face when
he speculated on his father's reception of the coming news; and very soon
he ceased to think of it at all, burying himself in the work he had
brought with him for the journey. For he had in high degree the faculty,
so essential to public life, of switching off his whole attention from
one subject to another.

On arriving at Paddington he drove straight to Valleys House.

This large dwelling with its pillared portico, seemed to wear an air of
faint surprise that, at the height of the season, it was not more
inhabited. Three servants relieved Miltoun of his little luggage; and
having washed, and learned that his father would be dining in, he went
for a walk, taking his way towards his rooms in the Temple. His long
figure, somewhat carelessly garbed, attracted the usual attention, of
which he was as usual unaware. Strolling along, he meditated deeply on a
London, an England, different from this flatulent hurly-burly, this
'omniuin gatherum', this great discordant symphony of sharps and flats.
A London, an England, kempt and self-respecting; swept and garnished of
slums, and plutocrats, advertisement, and jerry-building, of
sensationalism, vulgarity, vice, and unemployment. An England where each
man should know his place, and never change it, but serve in it loyally
in his own caste. Where every man, from nobleman to labourer, should be
an oligarch by faith, and a gentleman by practice. An England so
steel-bright and efficient that the very sight should suffice to impose
peace. An England whose soul should be stoical and fine with the
stoicism and fineness of each soul amongst her many million souls; where
the town should have its creed and the country its