There was silence a moment. After which Doris said, with a cold
decision:

"You can't imagine how absurd it seems to me that you should come and
ask me to help Lady Dunstable with her son. There is nobody in the world
less helpless than Lady Dunstable, and nobody who would be less grateful
for being helped. 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. Don't you see how very awkward it would be? Let me advise