“I expect you enjoyed staying with Lady Manorwater, Alice?” Mrs. Andrews declared at dinner. “They are very plain people, aren’t they, to be such great aristocrats?
“I suppose so,” said the girl listlessly.
“I once met Lady Manorwater at Mrs. Cookson’s at afternoon tea. I thought she was badly dressed. You know Manorwater, don’t you, George?” said the lady to her husband, with the boldness which comes from the use of a peer’s name without the handle.
“Oh yes, I know him well. I have met him at the Liberal Club dinners, and I was his chairman once when he spoke on Irish affairs. A delightful man!”
“I suppose they would have a pleasant house-party when you were here, my dear?” asked the lady. “And of course you had the election. What fun! And what a victory for you, Mr. Stocks! I hear you beat the greatest landowner in the district.”
Mr. Stocks smiled and glanced at Alice. The girl flushed; she could not help it; and she hated Mr. Stocks for his look.
Her father spoke for the first time. “What is the young man like, Mr. Stocks? I hear he is very proud and foolish, the sort of over-educated type which the world has no use for.”
“I like him,” said Mr. Stocks dishonestly. “He fought like a gentleman.”
“These people are so rarely gentlemen,” said Mrs. Andrews, proud of her high attitude. “I suppose his father made his money in coal and bought the land from some poor dear old aristocrat. It is so sad to think of it. And that sort of person is always over-educated, for you see they have not the spirit of the old families and they bury themselves in books.” Mrs. Andrews’s father had kept a crockery shop, but his daughter had buried the memory.
Mr. Wishart frowned. The lady had been asked down for her husband’s sake, and he did not approve of this chatter about family. Mr. Stocks, who was about to explain the Haystoun pedigree, caught his host’s eye and left the dangerous subject untouched.