"I've been reading the life of Edmund Burke."
He bent forward eagerly. "It's interesting, isn't it?"
"Yes, yes, indeed it is! But I want to ask you why a hundred years have made such a change? Why it is that now a young man who has every aptitude for political life——" Lucy hesitated, the words were not really her own, they had been suggested—almost put into her mouth—by Oliver's mother.
"Yes?" he said again, as if to encourage her.
"Why such a person cannot now accept money from—from—a friend, if it will help him to be useful to his country?"
"You mean"—he went straight to the point—"why cannot I take money from James Berwick?" He was looking at her rather grimly. He had not thought that Mrs. Boringdon would find the girl so apt a pupil.
Poor Lucy shrank back. "Forgive me," she said, in a low tone, "I should not have asked you such a question."
"You have every right," he said, impulsively. "Are we not friends, you and I? Perhaps you did not know that this was an old quarrel between my mother and myself. Berwick did once make me such an offer, but I think you will see—that you will feel—with me that I could not have accepted it."
General Kemp, coming down half an hour later, found them still eagerly discussing Edmund Burke, and so finding, told himself, and a little later told his wife, that the world had indeed changed in the last thirty years, and that he, for his part, thought the old ways of love were better than the new.