Very often when anybody talks to me on the other side, I am almost as much persuaded as I am by the Socialists: they always told me in London I was the prey of the last speaker.

But it can't make any difference to one's _feeling_: nothing touches that." She turned to Lord Maxwell, half appealing-- "It is when I go down from our house to the village; when I see the places the people live in; when one is comfortable in the carriage, and one passes some woman in the rain, ragged and dirty and tired, trudging back from her work; when one realises that they have no _rights_ when they come to be old, nothing to look to but charity, for which _we_, who have everything, expect them to be grateful; and when I know that every one of them has done more useful work in a year of their life than I shall ever do in the whole of mine, then I feel that the whole state of things is _somehow_ wrong and topsy-turvy and _wicked_." Her voice rose a little, every emphasis grew more passionate.

"And if I don't do something--the little such a person as I can--to alter it before I die, I might as well never have lived." Everybody at table started.

Lord Maxwell looked at Miss Raeburn, his mouth twitching over the humour of his sister's dismay.

Well! this was a forcible young woman: was Aldous the kind of man to be able to deal conveniently with such eyes, such emotions, such a personality?
Suddenly Lady Winterbourne's deep voice broke in: "I never could say it half so well as that, Miss Boyce; but I agree with you.