"Great political changes you mean?"
She nodded; then added—
"But only for the sake, of course, of great social changes to come after."
He pondered a moment.
"Aldous has never believed in great changes coming suddenly. He constantly looks upon me as rash in the things I adopt and believe in. But for the contriving, unceasing effort of every day to make that part of the social machine in which a man finds himself work better and more equitably, I have never seen Aldous's equal—for the steady passion, the persistence, of it."
She looked up. His pale face had taken to itself glow and fire; his eyes were full of strenuous, nay, severe expression. Her foolish pride rebelled a little.
"Of course, I haven't seen much of that yet," she said slowly.
His look for a moment was indignant, incredulous, then melted into a charming eagerness.
"But you will! naturally you will!—see everything. I hug myself sometimes now for pure pleasure that some one besides his grandfather and I will know what Aldous is and does. Oh! the people on the estate know; his neighbours are beginning to know; and now that he is going into Parliament, the country will know some day, if work and high intelligence have the power I believe. But I am impatient! In the first place—I may say it to you, Miss Boyce!—I want Aldous to come out of that manner of his to strangers, which is the only bit of the true Tory in him; you can get rid of it, no one else can—How long shall I give you?—And in the next, I want the world not to be wasting itself on baser stuff when it might be praising Aldous!"
"Does he mean Mr. Wharton?" thought Marcella, quickly. "But this world—our world—hates him and runs him down."