t, taking no notice of this by-play;
'I should like to know, Mr. Wendover, leaving the Archbishop out of
count, what _you_ understand by this word enthusiasm in this maxim of
yours?'

'An excellent manner,' thought Lady Charlotte, who with all her
noisiness, was an extremely shrewd woman, 'an excellent manner and an
unprovoked attack.'

Catherine's trained eye, however, had detected signs in Robert's look
and bearing which were lost on Lady Charlotte, and which made her
look nervously on. As to the rest of the table, they had all fallen to
watching the 'break' between the new Rector and their host with a good
deal of curiosity.

The Squire paused a moment before replying.

'It is not easy to put it tersely,' he said at last; 'but I may define
it, perhaps, as the mania for mending the roof of your right-hand
neighbor with straw torn off the roof of your left-hand neighbor; the
custom, in short, of robbing Peter to propitiate Paul.'

'Precisely,' said Mr. Wynnstay, warmly; 'all the ridiculous Radical
nostrums of the last fifty years--you have hit them off exactly.
Sometimes you rob more and propitiate less; sometimes you rob less and
propitiate more. But the principle is always the same.' And mindful of
all those intolerable evenings, when these same Radical nostrums had
been forced down his throat at his own table he threw a pugnacious look
at his wife, who smiled back serenely in reply. There is small redress
indeed for these things, when out of the common household stock the wife
possesses most of the money, and a vast proportion of the brains.

'And the cynic takes pleasure in observing,' interrupted the Squire,
'that the man who effects the change of balance does it in the loftiest
manner, and profits in the vulgarest way. Other trades may fail. The
agitator is always sure of his market.'

He spoke with a harsh contemptuous insistence which was gradually
setting every nerve in Robert's body tingling. He bent forward again,
his long, thin frame and boyish, bright complexioned face making an
effective contrast to the Squire's bronzed and wrinkled squareness.

'Oh, if you and Mr. Wynnstay are prepared to draw an indictment against
your generation and all its works I have no more to say,' he said,
smiling still, though his voice had risen a little in spite of himself.
'I should be content to withdraw with my Burke into the majority. I
imagined your attack on enthusiasm had a narrower scope, but if it is
to be m