A few days after his interview with Bella, Lisle overtook Millicent as she was walking up a wooded dale. She looked around with a smile when he joined her and they fell into friendly talk. There were points on which they differed, but a sense of mutual appreciation was steadily growing stronger between them. Presently Lisle happened to mention the Marples, and Millicent glanced at him thoughtfully. She knew that he met Bella at their house.
“You have seen a good deal of these people, one way or another,” she remarked.
“These people? Aren’t you a little prejudiced against them?”
“I suppose I am,” Millicent confessed.
“Then won’t you give me the reason? Your point of view isn’t always clear to an outsider.”
“I’ll try to be lucid. I don’t so much object to Marple as I do to what he stands for; I mean to modern tendency.”
“That’s as involved as ever.”
The girl showed a little good-humored impatience. She did not care to supply the explanation—it was against her instincts—and she was inclined to wonder why she should do so merely because the man had asked for it.
“Well,” she said, “the feudal system isn’t dead, and I believe that what is best in it need never disappear altogether. Of course, it had its drawbacks, but I think it was better than the commercialism that is replacing it. It recognized obligations on both sides, and there is a danger of forgetting them; the new people often fail to realize them at all. Marple—I’m using him as an example—bought the land for what he could get out of it.”
“About three per cent., he told me. It isn’t a great inducement.”