But a grave matter troubled Palmet’s head.
“Who was that fellow who walked off with Miss Denham?”
“A married man,” said Beauchamp: “badly married; more’s the pity; he has a wife in the madhouse. His name is Lydiard.”
“Not her brother! Where’s her uncle?”
“She won’t let him come to these meetings. It’s her idea; well-intended, but wrong, I think. She’s afraid that Dr. Shrapnel will alarm the moderate Liberals and damage Radical me.”
Palmet muttered between his teeth, “What queer things they let their women do!” He felt compelled to say, “Odd for her to be walking home at night with a fellow like that.”
It chimed too consonantly with a feeling of Beauchamp’s, to repress which he replied: “Your ideas about women are simply barbarous, Palmet. Why shouldn’t she? Her uncle places his confidence in the man, and in her. Isn’t that better—ten times more likely to call out the sense of honour and loyalty, than the distrust and the scandal going on in your class?”
“Please to say yours too.”
“I’ve no class. I say that the education for women is to teach them to rely on themselves.”
“Ah! well, I don’t object, if I’m the man.”