reassured him.

Lord Borrodaile, to whom Vida still talked freely, he alone had some
understanding of the changed face life was coming to wear for her. When
he found that laughing at her failed of the desired effect, he offered
touching testimony to his affection for her by trying to understand. It
was no small thing for a man like Borrodaile, who, for the rest, found
it no easier than others of his class rightly to interpret the modern
scene as looked down upon from the narrow lancet of the mediaeval tower
which was his mind.

When she got him to smile at her report of the humours of the populace,
he did so against his will, shaking his long Van Dyke head, and saying--

'It spoils the fun for me to think of your being there. I have a quite
unconquerable distrust of eccentricity.'

'There's nothing the least original about my mixing with "The People,"
as my sister would call them. The women of my world would often go
slumming. The only difference between me and them may be that I,
perhaps, shall go a little farther, that's all.'

'Well, I devoutly hope you won't!' he said, with unusual emphasis. 'Let
the proletariat attend to the affairs of the proletariat. They don't
need a woman like you.'

'They not only need--what's more, they are getting, all kinds! It's
that, more than anything else, that shows their strength. The miracle it
is, to see the way they all work together! Women, the poorest and most
ignorant (except of hardship), working shoulder to shoulder with women
of substance and position. Oh, yes, they are winning over that sort,
teachers and university graduates--a whole group who would be called
Intellectuals if they were men--all doing what men have said women could
never do--pulling together. And, oh! that reminds me,' she said
suddenly, smiling as one who has thought of a capital joke at her
companion's expense: 'it's my duty to warn you. I went with your
daughter to lunch at her Country Club, and they were all discussing the
Suffrage! A good dozen! And Sophia--well, Sophia came out in a new
light. I want you, please, to believe _I've_ never talked to her.'

'Oh,' said Borrodaile, with an unconscious arrogance, 'Sophia doesn't
wait to be talked to. She takes her own line. Politics are a tradition
with our women. I found her reading the parliamentary debates when she
was fourteen.'

'And your boys, are they equally----?'

He sighed. 'The world has got very topsy-turvy. All my girls are
boys--and