‘Not much,’ he said, with an embarrassed smile. ‘I saw little Miss Grey about some of our schemes; but you don’t give Miss Grey the light of your countenance.’
‘I have never noticed any but the principal people—who, in case of an election or any public matter, might be useful.’
‘I don’t see what an election would be to us.’
‘Nor I, Leo. But it is part of our hereditary policy to keep the matter open, should you or any one of the family be of a different opinion.’
‘My dear mother,’ he said, with a laugh, ‘don’t you think this hereditary policy is overdone a little? I am afraid I thought myself a person of much greater importance than I prove to be.’
‘I don’t admit it,’ she said; ‘but is that why you are taking so much trouble for the canaille?’
‘No,’ said the young man, growing red. ‘I take trouble for the canaille, as you call them—our poor neighbours, Miss Grey says—because I thought I was somehow responsible for them.’
‘Responsible!’
‘I should have been,’ he said firmly, ‘had I been their seigneur; which I suppose in my folly was something like what I thought: now that I know they are only our poor neighbours——’
‘Well: you think you may at least get the benefit in popularity,’ she said, with a laugh.