She nodded understandingly.
"Unfortunately," he continued, "St. George's Hall is personified for him in Anthony Cobbens. He told me all about their early associations and subsequent estrangement. I must say that after his arraignment of the man, I half expected to see them fly at each other's throats, whereas they almost embraced." He threw back his head and laughed heartily at the remembrance.
"The amenities of civilisation—and politics," she murmured, smiling.
"But how roiled poor Emmet was underneath," he mused. "I wish I had Cardington's gift of speech to express the thoughts that have lately been taking shape in my mind concerning the spectacle of a democratic aristocracy. Now, if Emmet had the philosophical attitude of mind, he would n't have the strength to struggle which he undoubtedly does have. He needs that stimulus of personal animosity to get somewhere; if he were philosophical, he would be unambitious. When he has arrived, as they say, he will come to see that an aristocracy in the usual worldly sense of the term must have money to maintain its existence. The old aristocracy must have accessions of vulgar blood and vulgar money to keep it alive, just as the language must be rejuvenated from time to time by slang from the streets. I made a tentative effort to present some such point of view to him as you suggested, but it didn't take. He could only see Cobbens's red head in front of his eyes, and it was like the proverbial rag of the same colour to the bull. Emmet is a generation short of being able to see in his personal enemy a synopsis of the processes of history. This, in short, is my conclusion. I'm afraid I did n't accomplish what we hoped for."
"I might have known it," she commented. "But I'm grateful to you for making the attempt."
"What hypocrites we are!" he cried, sitting up. "A little of my own philosophy would n't be a bad thing for home use. I could easily allow myself to get into as great a rage against Warwick as Emmet himself. Already I 've begun to call it hard names, such as deadly, and cold, and snobbish. I'm beginning to see that a man like myself must always be on the outside here. I ought to have begun to live in Warwick three generations ago, or to have brought a fortune with me. In the West men are estimated on their individual merits, and one is n't made to feel himself an outsider."
"Perhaps because there's no inside to get into," she suggested coolly.
He had a vision of that sanctum into which Cobbens could buy his way with his wife's money, and he realised that this was not the first glimpse he had had of a quality in the woman he loved that was not all sweetness.
"I feel like one who has interfered in a family quarrel," he returned, good-naturedly. "Well, I may be only a transient here, a bird of passage nesting for a year in the towers of the Hall. I will earnestly request myself to be amused at the spectacle of a democratic aristocracy." He felt that in her heart she agreed with him, else, why did she favour Emmet's candidacy?
"That will be like the attempt to extract sunbeams from cucumbers," she replied, with a note of weariness in her voice. "But the equanimity with which you took my speech about the West makes me feel like a horrid shrew. Have you really got a sweet disposition, Mr. Leigh, or are you just putting on airs?"