A week passed before Kimberly and Alice met. It was at Charles Kimberly's. Doctor Bryson, the Nelsons, and Fritzie were there.
As Alice and her husband came down, Charles Kimberly and Robert walked out of the library. Robert bowed to MacBirney and to Alice--who scarcely allowed her eyes to answer his greeting.
"Are you always glad to get back to your own country, Mrs. Kimberly?" asked MacBirney greeting his hostess.
Imogene smiled. "Dutifully glad."
"Is that all?"
"At least, I come back with the same feeling of relief that I am getting back to democracy."
"That is," suggested Lottie Nelson, "getting back to where you are the aristocracy."
Dolly, who with her husband joined them in time to hear the remark, tossed her head. "I always thank Heaven, Lottie, that we have no aristocracy here."
"But you are wrong, Dolly, we have," objected Robert Kimberly as the party went into the drawing-room. "Democracy is nothing but an aristocracy of ability. What else can happen when you give everybody a chance? We began in this country by ridding ourselves of an aristocracy of heredity and privilege; and we have only succeeded in substituting for it the coldest, cruelest aristocracy known to man--the aristocracy of brains. This is the aristocracy that controls our manufacturing, our transportation, our public service and our finance; it makes our laws and apportions our taxation. And from this fell cause done our present griefs arise."
"But you must rid yourself of the grossly material conception of an aristocracy, Mr. Kimberly," said Nelson. "Our real aristocracy, I take it, is not our material one, as Robert Kimberly insists. The true aristocrat, I hold, is the real but mere gentleman."