er not, for Heaven's sake, go ranging
as far as that red fellow of middle age, who might have ideas, but
had no pedigree; let her stick to youth and her own order, and marry
the--young man, confound him, who looked like a Greek god, of the wrong
period, having grown a moustache. He remembered her words the other
evening about these two and the different lives they lived. Some
romantic notion or other was working in her! And again he looked at
Courtier. A Quixotic type--the sort that rode slap-bang at everything!
All very well--but not for Babs! She was not like the glorious
Garibaldi's glorious Anita! It was truly characteristic of Lord
Dennis--and indeed of other people--that to him champions of Liberty
when dead were far dearer than champions of Liberty when living. Yes,
Babs would want more, or was it less, than just a life of sleeping under
the stars for the man she loved, and the cause he fought for. She would
want pleasure, and, not too much effort, and presently a little power;
not the uncomfortable after-fame of a woman who went through fire, but
the fame and power of beauty, and Society prestige. This, fancy of hers,
if it were a fancy, could be nothing but the romanticism of a young
girl. For the sake of a passing shadow, to give up substance? It
wouldn't do! And again Lord Dennis fixed his shrewd glance on his
great-niece. Those eyes, that smile! Yes! She would grow out of this.
And take the Greek god, the dying Gaul--whichever that young man was!

CHAPTER XXI

It was not till the morning of polling day itself that Courtier
left Monkland Court. He had already suffered for some time from bad
conscience. For his knee was practically cured, and he knew well that
it was Barbara, and Barbara alone, who kept him staying there.
The atmosphere of that big house with its army of servants, the
impossibility of doing anything for himself, and the feeling of hopeless
insulation from the vivid and necessitous sides of life, galled him
greatly. He felt a very genuine pity for these people who seemed to lead
an existence as it were smothered under their own social importance. It
was not their fault. He recognized that they did their best. They were
good specimens of their kind; neither soft nor luxurious, as things
went in a degenerate and extravagant age; they evidently tried to
be simple--and this seemed to him to heighten the pathos of their
situation. Fate had been too much for them. What human spirit could
emer