I really cannot meddle with it." She rose as she spoke, and Miss Wigram rose too.
"Couldn't you--couldn't you--" said the girl pleadingly--"just ask Mr.
Meadows to warn Lord Dunstable?
I'm thinking of the villagers, and the farmers, and the schools--all the people we used to love.

Father was there twenty years! To think of the dear place given over--some day--to that creature!" Her charming eyes actually filled with tears.

Doris was touched, but at the same time set on edge.

This loyalty that people born and bred in the country feel to our English country system--what an absurd and unreal frame of mind! And when our country system produces Lady Dunstables! "They have such a pull!"-- she thought angrily--"such a hideously unfair pull, over other people! The way everybody rushes to help them when they get into a mess--to pick up the pieces--and sweep it all up! It's irrational--it's sickening! Let them look after themselves--and pay for their own misdeeds like the rest of us." "I can't interfere--I really can't!" she said, straightening her slim shoulders.

"It is not as though we were old friends of Lord and Lady Dunstable.