"I must thank you; I must give some vent to my emotions," cried
Gordon. "This sum, great in itself, is far more to me than you can
imagine: it opens my career; it assures my future."

"So Kenelm tells me; he said that sum would be more use to you now
than ten times the amount twenty years hence."

"So it will,--it will. And Kenelm consents to this sacrifice?"

"Consents! urges it."

Gordon turned away his face, and Sir Peter resumed: "You want to get
into Parliament; very natural ambition for a clever young fellow. I
don't presume to dictate politics to you. I hear you are what is
called a Liberal; a man may be a Liberal, I suppose, without being a
Jacobin."

"I hope so, indeed. For my part I am anything but a violent man."

"Violent, no! Who ever heard of a violent Chillingly? But I was
reading in the newspaper to-day a speech addressed to some popular
audience, in which the orator was for dividing all the lands and all
the capital belonging to other people among the working class, calmly
and quietly, without any violence, and deprecating violence: but
saying, perhaps very truly, that the people to be robbed might not
like it, and might offer violence; in which case woe betide them; it
was they who would be guilty of violence; and they must take the
consequences if they resisted the reasonable, propositions of himself
and his friends! That, I suppose, is among the new ideas with which
Kenelm is more familiar than I am. Do you entertain those new ideas?"