ern was on the point of referring to his private reasons for
befriending Adela, but checked himself.

'What I made no secret of approving was their substitution of human
relations between employer and employed for the detestable "nexus of
cash payment," as Carlyle calls it. That is only a return to the good
old order, and it seems to me that it becomes more impossible every day.
Thus far I am with the Socialists, in that I denounce the commercial
class, the _bourgeois_, the capitalists--call them what you will--as the
supremely maleficent. They hold us at their mercy, and their mercy is
nought. Monstrously hypocritical, they cry for progress when they mean
increased opportunities of swelling their own purses at the expense of
those they employ, and of those they serve; vulgar to the core, they
exalt a gross ideal of well-being, and stink in their prosperity. The
very poor and the uncommercial wealthy alike suffer from them; the
intellect of the country is poisoned by their influence. They it is
who indeed are oppressors; they grow rich on the toil of poor girls
in London garrets and of men who perish prematurely to support their
children. I won't talk of these people; I should lose my calm views of
things and use language too much like this of the "Fiery Cross."'

Hubert was thoughtful.

'What is before us?' he murmured.

'Evil; of that I am but too firmly assured. Progress will have its way,
and its path will be a path of bitterness. A pillar of dark cloud leads
it by day, and of terrible fire by night. I do not say that the promised
land may not lie ahead of its guiding, but woe is me for the desert
first to be traversed! Two vices are growing among us to dread
proportions--indifference and hatred: the one will let poverty anguish
at its door, the other will hound on the vassal against his lord. Papers
like the "Fiery Cross," even though such a man as Westlake edit them,
serve the cause of hatred; they preach, by implication at all
events, the childish theory of the equality of men, and seek to make
discontented a whole class which only needs regular employment on the
old conditions to be perfectly satisfied.'

'Westlake says here that they have no _right_ to be satisfied.'

'I know. It is one of the huge fallacies of the time; it comes of the
worship of progress. I am content with the fact that, even in our
bad day, as a class they _are_ satisfied. No, these reforms address
themselves to the wrong people; they