Nobody spoke until Cheyne felt it advisable to break the silence.
“You have no sympathy with Grant, Miss Allonby?”
“No,” said the girl plaintively. “I don’t go quite as far as Mr. Clavering and my cousin do—though Chris generally talks too much—but Larry is a nuisance, and really ought to be crushed. You see, we had everything we wanted before he and the others made the trouble here.”
“That is quite convincing,” Cheyne said, with somewhat suspicious gravity. He looked at the others, and fancied that Hetty would have answered but that Flora Schuyler flashed a warning glance at her.
“One could almost fancy that most of us have too much now,” she said. “Are we better, braver, stronger, or of choicer stuff than those others who have nothing, and only want the little the law would give them? Oh, yes, we are accomplished—very indifferently, some of us—and have been better taught, though one sometimes wonders at the use we make of it; but was that education given us for our virtues, or thrust upon us by the accident that our fathers happened to be rich?”
“You will scarcely approve, Miss Allonby?” said Cheyne.
The girl’s lips curled scornfully. “I never argue with people who talk like that. It would not be any use—and they would never understand me; but everybody knows we were born different from the rabble. It is unfortunate you and Larry couldn’t go up and down the country together, convincing people, Flo.”
Cheyne, seeing the gleam in Miss Schuyler’s eyes, wondered whether there had been malice in the speech, and was not sorry that Torrance and Clavering came in just then.
“I have just come from Newcombe’s and heard that you had failed,” said Torrance. “If you will come along to my room, I should like to hear about it.”
Cheyne smiled as he rose. “I don’t know that failed was quite the correct word. My object was to protect the track, and so far as I could discover, no attempt was made to damage it.”