rg. His lip curled a little
with almost playful scorn. At St. Petersburg, Vienna, and elsewhere he
had been vaguely conscious of these social changes; but they did not
come within the ambit of his daily life, and so it had not mattered.
And there was no reason why it should matter now. His England was a
land the original elements of which would not change, had not changed;
for the old small inner circle had not been invaded, was still
impervious to the wash of wealth and snobbery and push. That refuge had
its sequestered glades, if perchance it was unilluminating and rather
heavily decorous; so that he could let the climbers, the toadies, the
gold-spillers, and the bribers have the middle of the road.

It did not matter so much that London was changing fast. The old clock
on the tower of St. James's would still give the time to his step as he
went to and from the Foreign Office, and there were quiet places like
Kensington Gardens where the bounding person would never think to
stray. Indeed, they never strayed; they only rushed and pushed where
their spreading tails could be seen by the multitude. They never got
farther west than Rotten Row, which was in possession of three classes
of people--those who sat in Parliament, those who had seats on the
Stock Exchange, and those who could not sit their horses. Three years
had not done it all, but it had done a good deal; and he was more
keenly alive to the changes and developments which had begun long
before he left and had increased vastly since. Wealth was more and more
the master of England--new-made wealth; and some of it was too
ostentatious and too pretentious to condone, much less indulge.

All at once his eye, roaming down the columns, came upon the following
announcement:

"Mr. and Mrs. Rudyard Byng have returned to town from Scotland for a
few days, before proceeding to Wales, where they are presently to
receive at Glencader Castle the Duke and Duchess of Sheffield, the
Prince and Princess of Cleaves, M. Santon, the French Foreign Minister,
the Slavonian Ambassador, the Earl and Countess of Tynemouth, and Mr.
Tudor Tempest."

"'And Mr. Tudor Tempest,'" Ian repeated to himself. "Well, she would.
She would pay that much tribute to her own genius. Four-fifths to the
claims of the body and the social nervous system, and one-fifth to the
desire of the soul. Tempest is a literary genius by what he has done,
and she is a genius by nature, and with so much left undone. T