land for the people--graduated income-tax--the extinction of landlord
and capitalist as soon as may be--_e tutti quanti_. He talks with great
eloquence and ability. In our villages I find he is making way every
week. The people think his manners perfect. ''Ee 'as a way wi' un,' said
an old labourer to me last week. 'If 'ee wor to coe the wild birds, I do
believe, Muster Raeburn, they'd coom to un!'"

"Yet you dislike him!" said Marcella, a daring smile dancing on the dark
face she turned to him. "One can hear it in every word you say."

He hesitated, trying, even at the moment that an impulse of jealous
alarm which astonished himself had taken possession of him, to find the
moderate and measured phrase.

"I have known him from a boy," he said. "He is a connection of the
Levens, and used to be always there in old days. He is very brilliant
and very gifted--"

"Your 'but' must be very bad," she threw in, "it is so long in coming."

"Then I will say, whatever opening it gives you," he replied with
spirit, "that I admire him without respecting him."

"Who ever thought otherwise of a clever opponent?" she cried. "It is the
stock formula."

The remark stung, all the more because Aldous was perfectly conscious
that there was much truth in her implied charge of prejudice. He had
never been very capable of seeing this particular man in the dry light
of reason, and was certainly less so than before, since it had been
revealed to him that Wharton and Mr. Boyce's daughter were to be
brought, before long, into close neighbourhood.

"I am sorry that I seem to you such a Pharisee," he said, turning upon
her a look which had both pain and excitement in it.

She was silent, and they walked on a few yards without speaking. The
wood had thickened around them: The high road was no longer visible. No
sound of wheels or footsteps reached them. The sun struck freely through
the beech-trees, already half bared, whitening the grey trunks at
intervals to an arrowy distinctness and majesty, or kindling the slopes
of red and freshly fallen leaves below into great patches of light and
flame. Through the stems, as always, the girdling blues of the plain,
and in their faces a gay and buoyant breeze, speaking rather of spring
than autumn. Robins, "yellow autumn's nightingales," sang in the hedge
to their right. In the pause between them, sun, wind, birds made their
charm felt. Nature, perpetual chorus as she is to man, stole in, urging,
woo