“Vale Royal was given by Henry the Second to the Roxhalls of that time,” he continued. “My cousin wanted money, it is true; but not so desperately that he need have done so vile a thing. He was led into it. The man who has bought it is a brute from the Northwestern States; made his fortune in all kinds of foul ways, drinking-shops, gambling-saloons, cattle-trading, opium-dealing, cheating poor devils who landed with a little money and went to him for advice and concessions; an unspeakable rascal, who after thirty years’ infamy out there pulls himself together, praises God for all His mercies, and comes back to this country to go to church, sit in Parliament, wear a tall hat, and buy English society and English estates. Don’t you agree with me that it is utterly disgraceful?”
She held her violets higher up to her face so that he saw nothing but her eyes, which were looking down the long straight white road which stretched out before them into a grey haze of fogs.
“I quite agree with you,” she said in very clear and incisive tones. “I think it utterly disgraceful. But the disgrace is as much to the bought as the buyer.”
“Certainly,” said Hurstmanceaux with great warmth. “A society is utterly rotten and ruined when such a fungus as this can take root in it. That I have always maintained. ‘Tell me whom you know and I will tell you what you are,’ is as true when said of society as when it is said of an individual. Certainly society only knows this man, this Massarene, in a perfunctory supercilious way, and only gives him the kind of nod which is the equivalent of a kick; but it does know him; it drinks his wines and eats his dinners; it nods to him, it elects him, it leaves cards on him; it lets him look ridiculous in white breeches and a gilded coat at St. James’s, and it makes him pay through the nose for all its amiabilities and tolerations. It is an infamy!”
She looked straight before her down the road and did not reply.
“You said you agreed with me?” said Hurstmanceaux, surprised at her silence.
“I agree with you entirely.”
But there was a chillness in her tone which suggested to him that, however completely she shared his opinions, the subject was disagreeable to her.
“She can’t belong to that class herself, she is thoroughbred down to the ground,” he thought, as he said aloud, “I am afraid you are tired. The cold is beginning to tell on you.”
“No; I am not at all cold,” she answered, holding up nearer to her the poor violets shrivelling in the frost.