"Democracy there is confined to
politics. In other respects, our class prejudices are far more rigid
than yours. But then I see a great change in this country since I was
here as a student."
"You have lost your affection for it, perhaps?" she ventured, looking at
him through half-closed eyes.
"On the contrary," he assured her, "my gratitude towards her was never
so great as at this moment. Your country has given me nothing I prize
so much, Lady Maggie, as my knowledge of you."
She looked away from his very earnest eyes, and the light retort died
away upon her lips. The men and women whom she watched so steadfastly
seemed like puppets, the flowers artificial, the music unreal. Already
she was beginning to resent the influence which he was establishing over
her. The art of badinage in which she was so proficient stood her in no
stead. Words, even the power of light speech, had deserted her.
"Tell me about the changes that you see," she asked.
"Perhaps," he replied, after a moment's hesitation, "it is because I am
an occasional visitor that differences seem so marked to me, but look at
the tables there. That is the Duke of Illinton, is it not? At the next
table, the man in the strange clothes and uncomfortable hat--it seems to
me that I have seen him somewhere under different circumstances."
Maggie nodded.
"Life is a terrible hotchpotch nowadays," she admitted. "After the war,
our gentry and aristocracy who were not wealthy were taxed out of
existence.
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