"Mr Torrance would not like London life," Lady Lindores said, coming to his aid; "turning night into day is hard upon those who are accustomed to a more natural existence."
"You speak as if I had never been out of the country," said her ungracious son-in-law. "I know that's the idea entertained of me in this house: but it's a mistake. I've seen life just as much as those who make more fuss about it."
"And you, Mr Erskine, have you seen life?" said Lady Lindores, turning to him with, a smile.
"Very little," said John—"in London at least."
"It's a wonderful idea to me, though most people seem to hold it," said Dr Meldrum, coming in, in a pause of that conversation with Lady Caroline, which sometimes alarmed him by its abstractness and elevation, "that life is only to be seen in London, or in Paris, or some of those big centres. Under correction, Lady Lindores, and not to put my small experience above the more instructed——"
"That is an alarming beginning," cried Edith. "Dr Meldrum means to show us how ignorant we all are."
"That's what I never can show any one in this house," said the minister, with old-fashioned politeness; "but my opinion is, that life in a great metropolis is the most conventional—ay, you'll acknowledge that—the most contracted, the most narrow, the most——Well, well, if you'll not let a man speak——"
The hubbub of contradiction and amusement made the party more genial, more at ease, than it had yet been.
"If you make that out, Doctor, you will give us something new to think of," the Earl said.
And poor Lady Caroline, who found in the good minister her chief intellectual resource, prepared to listen to his argument with all the attention of a hearer who believes fully in the abilities of her guide. "I think I can see what Dr Meldrum means," she said.