'That really is how I felt,' said Mrs. Tyrrell. 'But Mr. Egremont will never be persuaded of that. He is so wholehearted in his desire to help these poor people, yet, I'm afraid, so very, very unpractical.'

The young married lady observed:

'Oh, no one ought _ever_ to interfere with philanthropy unless they have a _very_ practical scheme. Canon Brougham was so emphatic on that point this morning. So _much_ harm may be done, when we mean everything for the best.'

'Yes, I feel that very strongly,' said Dalmaine, his masculine accent more masculine than ever after the plaintive piping. 'I even fear that Mr. Egremont is doing wrong in making his lectures free. We may be sure they are well worth paying to hear, and it's an axiom in all dealing with the working class that they will never value anything that they don't pay for.'

'Oh, but Mr. Dalmaine,' protested Paula, 'you couldn't ask Mr. Egremont to take money at the door!'

'It sounds shocking, Miss Tyrrell, but if Mr. Egremont stands before them as a teacher, he ought to charge for his lessons. I assure you they would put a far higher value on his lectures. I grieve to hear that his class has fallen off. I could have foreseen that. The basis is not sound. To put it in plain, even coarse, language, all social reform must be undertaken on strictly commercial principles.'

'How I should like to hear you say that to Mr. Egremont!' remarked Paula. 'Oh, his face!'

'Mr. Egremont is an idealist,' said Mrs. Tyrrell, smiling.

'Surely the very _last_ kind of person to attempt social reform!'

exclaimed the young married lady.

The conversation drew off into other channels. Mr. Dalmaine was supplied with the clearest opinions on every topic, and he had a way of delivering them which was most effective with persons of Mrs. Tyrrell's composition. In everything he affected sobriety. If he had to express a severe judgment, it was done with gentlemanly regret. If he commended anything, he did so with a judicial air. In fact, it would not have been easy to imagine Mr. Dalmaine speaking with an outburst of natural fervour on any topic whatsoever. His view was the view of common sense, and he enunciated the barrenest convictions in a tone which would have suited profound originality.

A week later there was a dinner party at the Tyrrells, and Egremont was among the bidden. He had persisted in his tendency to hold aloof from general society, in spite of many warnings from Mrs. Ormonde, but he could not, short of ingratitude, wholly absent himself from his friends at Lancaster Gate. Mrs. Tyrrell was no exception to the rule in her attitude to Egremont; as did all matronly ladies, she held him in very warm liking, and sincerely hoped that a young man so admirably fitted for the refinements of social life would in time get rid of his extravagant idealism. A little of that was graceful; Society was beginning to view it with favour when confined within the proper bounds; but to carry it into act, and waste one's life in wholly unpractical--nay, in positively harmful--enterprise was a sad thing.

She had reasoned with him, but he showed himself so perverted in his sense of the fitness of things that the task had to be abandoned as hopeless. And yet the good lady liked him. She had hoped, and not so long ago, that he might some day desire to stand in a nearer relation to her than that of a friend, but herein again she felt that her wish was growing futile. Paula indulged in hints with reference to her cousin Annabel, and Mrs. Tyrrell began to fear that the strangely educated girl might be the cause of Walter's extreme aberrations.

Egremont arrived early on the evening of the dinner. Only one guest had preceded him. With Mrs. Tyrrell and Paula were Mr. Tyrrell and the son of the house, Mr. John, the Jack Tyrrell of sundry convivial clubs in town. Mr. Tyrrell senior was a high-coloured jovial gentleman of three score, great in finance, practical to the backbone, yet with wit and tact which put him at ease with all manner of men, even with social reformers. These latter amused him vastly; he failed to see that the world needed any reforming whatever, at all events beyond that which is constitutionally provided for in the proceedings of the British Parliament. He had great wealth; he fared sumptuously every day; things shone to him in a rosy after-dinner light. Not a gross or a selfish man, for he was as good-natured as he was contented, and gave very freely of his substance; it was simply his part in the world to enjoy the product of other men's labour and to set an example of glorious self-satisfaction. Egremont, in certain moods, had tried to despise Mr.

Tyrrell, but he never quite succeeded. Nor indeed was the man contemptible. Had you told him with frank conviction that you deemed him a poor sort of phenomenon, he would have shaken the ceiling with laughter and have admired you for your plain-speaking. For there was a large and generous vigour about him, and adverse criticism could only heighten his satisfaction in his own stability.

Something of the cold dignity in which she had taken refuge at Ullswater was still to be remarked in Paula's manner as she received Egremont. She held her charming head erect, and let her eyelids droop a little, and the few words which she addressed to him were rather absently spoken. With others, as they arrived, she was sportively intimate. Her bearing had gained a little in maturity during the past half year, but it was still with a blending of _naivete_ and capricious affectation that she wrought her spell. Her dress was a miracle, and inseparably a part of her; it was impossible to picture her in any serious situation, so entirely was she a child of luxury and frivolous concern. Exquisite as an artistic product of Society, she affected the imagination not so much by her personal charm as through the perfume of luxury which breathed about her. Egremont, with his radical tendencies of thought, found himself marvelling as he regarded her; what a life was hers! Compare it with that of some little work-girl in Lambeth, such as he saw in the street--what spaces between those two worlds! Was it possible that this dainty creation, this thing of material omnipotence, would suffer decay of her sweetness and in the end die?

The reason took her side and revolted against law; it would be an outrage if time or mischance laid hold upon her.

Yet there was something in Paula which he did not recognise. Since she could formulate desires, few had found impression on her lips which were not at once gratified; an exception caused her at first rather astonishment than impatience. Such astonishment fell upon her when she understood that Egremont's coming to Ullswater was not on her account.

In truth, she wished it had been, and from that moment the fates were kind enough to notice Paula's poor little existence, and bid her remember she was mortal. She took the admonition ill, and certainly it was impertinent from her point of view. She had slight philosophy, but out of that disappointment Paula by degrees drew an understanding that she had had a glimpse of a strange world, that something of moment had been at stake.

Egremont, standing in the rear of a chatting group, had all but dreamed himself into oblivion of the present when he heard loud announcement of 'Mr. Dalmaine.' It was some time since he had met the Member for Vauxhall. Looking upon the politician's well-knit frame, his well-coloured face with its expression of shrewd earnestness, he for a moment seemed to himself to shrink into insignificance. After sitting opposite Dalmaine for an hour at the dinner-table, he was able to regard the man again in what he deemed a true light. But the impression made upon one by an object suddenly presented when the thought is busy with far other things will as a rule embody much essential truth. As a force, Egremont would not have weighed in the scale against Dalmaine.

Putting himself in conscious opposition to such a man, he had but his due in a sense of nullity.

Mr. Tyrrell was kind to him in the assignment of a partner. A pretty, gentle, receptive maiden, anxious to show interest in things of the mind--with such a one Walter was at his best, because his simplest and happiest. He put away thought of Lambeth--which in truth was beginning to trouble his mind like a fixed idea--and talked much as he would have done a couple of years ago, with bright intelligence, with natural enjoyment of the hour. It was greatly his charm in such conversation that had made him a favourite with pleasant people of the world. In withdrawing himself from the sphere of these amenities he was opposing the free growth of his character, which in consequence suffered. He was cognisant of that; he knew that he was more himself to-night than he had been for some months. But the fixed idea waited in the background.

When the ladies were gone, he saw Dalmaine rise and come round the table towards him.

'I'm glad to see you again,' Dalmaine began, depositing his wine-glass and refilling it. 'Pray tell me something about your lectures. You have resumed since Christmas, I think?'

Egremont had no mind to speak of these things. It cost him an effort to find an answer.

'Yes, I still have a few hearers.'

And at once he was angry with himself for falling into this confession of failure. Dalmaine was the last man before whom he would affect humility.

'I am sure,' observed the politician, 'everyone who has the good of the working classes at heart must feel indebted to you. It's so very seldom that men of culture care to address audiences of that kind. Yet it must be the most effectual way of reaching the people. You address them on English Literature, I think?'

Egremont did not care to explain that he had now a broader subject. He murmured an affirmative. Dalmaine had hoped to elicit some of the 'Thoughts for the Present,' and felt disappointment.

'An excellent choice, it seems to me,' he continued, making his glass revolve on the table-cloth. 'They are much too ignorant of the best wealth of their country. They have so few inducements to read the great historians, for instance. If you can bring them to do so, you make them more capable citizens, abler to form a judgment on the questions of the day.'

Egremont smiled.

'My one aim,' he remarked, 'is to persuade them to forget that there are such things as questions of the day.'

Dalmaine also smiled, and with a slight involuntary curling of the lip.

'Ah, I remember our discussions on the Atlantic. I scarcely thought you would apply those ideas in their--their fulness, when you began practical work. You surely will admit that, in a time when their interests are engaging so much attention, working men should--for instance--go to the polls with intelligent preparation.'

'I'd rather they didn't go to the polls at all,' Walter replied. He knew that this was exaggeration, but it pleased him to exaggerate. He enjoyed the effect on the honourable member's broad countenance.

'Come, come!' said Dalmaine, laughing with appearance of entering into the joke. 'At that rate, English freedom would soon be at an end. One might as well abolish newspapers.'

'In my opinion, the one greatest boon that could be granted the working class. I do my best to dissuade them from the reading of newspapers.'

Dalmaine turned the whole matter into a jest. Secretly he believed that Egremont was poking contemptuous fun at him, but it was his principle to receive everything with good-humour. They drew apart again, each feeling more strongly than ever the instinctive opposition between their elements. It amounted to a reciprocal dislike, an irritation provoked by each other's presence. Dalmaine was beginning to suspect Egremont of some scheme too deep for his fathoming; it was easier for him to believe anything, than that idealism pure and simple was at the bottom of such behaviour. Walter, on the other hand, viewed the politician's personality with something more than contempt. Dalmaine embodied those forces of philistinism, that essence of the vulgar creed, which Egremont had undertaken to attack, and which, as he already felt, were likely to yield as little before his efforts as a stone wall under the blow of a naked hand. Two such would do well to keep apart.

On returning to the drawing-room, Egremont kept watch for a vacant place by Paula. Presently he was able to move to her side. She spread her fan upon her lap, and, ruffling its edge of white fur, said negligently:

'So you decided to waste an evening, Mr. Egremont.'

'I decided to have an evening of rest and enjoyment.'

'I suppose you are working dreadfully hard. When do you open your library?'

'Scarcely in less than four or five months.'

'And will you stand at the counter and give out books, like the young men at Mudie's?'

'Sometimes, I dare say. But I have found a librarian.'

'Who is he?'

'A working man in Lambeth. One of the most sympathetic natures I have ever met; a man who might have gone on all his life making candles--that is how things are arranged.'

'Making candles? What a funny change of occupation! And you really think you are doing good in that disagreeable place?'

'I can only hope.'

'You are quite sure you are not doing harm?'

'Does it seem to you that I am?'

Paula assumed an air of wisdom.

'Of course I have no right to speak of such things, but it is my opinion that you are destroying their sense of self-respect. I don't think they ought to have things _given_ them; they should be encouraged to help themselves.'