lenced. But she was not communicative, and Aldous was anxious.

"Do you think I was rude to your grandfather?" she asked him at last
abruptly, cutting dead short some information she had stiffly asked him
for just before, as to the date of the gallery and its collection.

"Rude!" he said startled. "Not at all. Not in the least. Do you suppose
we are made of such brittle stuff, we poor landowners, that we can't
stand an argument now and then?"

"Your aunt thought I was rude," she said unheeding. "I think I was. But
a house like this excites me." And with a little reckless gesture she
turned her head over her shoulder and looked down the gallery. A
Velasquez was beside her; a great Titian over the way; a priceless
Rembrandt beside it. On her right hand stood a chair of carved steel,
presented by a German town to a German emperor, which, had not its
equal in Europe; the brocade draping the deep windows in front of her
had been specially made to grace a state visit to the house of Charles
II.

"At Mellor," she went on, "we are old and tumble-down. The rain comes
in; there are no shutters to the big hall, and we can't afford to put
them--we can't afford even to have the pictures cleaned. I can pity the
house and nurse it, as I do the village. But here--"

And looking about her, she gave a significant shrug.

"What--our feathers again!" he said laughing. "But consider. Even you
allow that Socialism cannot begin to-morrow. There must be a transition
time, and clearly till the State is ready to take over the historical
houses and their contents, the present nominal owners of them are bound,
if they can, to take care of them. Otherwise the State will be some day
defrauded."

She could not be insensible to the charm of his manner towards her.
There was in it, no doubt, the natural force and weight of the man older
and better informed than his companion, and amused every now and then by
her extravagance. But even her irritable pride could not take offence.
For the intellectual dissent she felt at bottom was tempered by a moral
sympathy of which the gentleness and warmth touched and moved her in
spite of herself. And now that they were alone he could express himself.
So long as they had been in company he had seemed to her, as often
before, shy, hesitating, and ineffective. But with the disappearance of
spectators, who represented to him, no doubt, the harassing claim of
the critical judgment, all was freer, more assured, mo