Marcia Coryston looked down upon the speaker with an air that said, "A
country cousin, I suppose."

But she whispered, civilly enough: "Yes. She always sits in that corner.
Weren't you here when he was speaking?"

"No--I've not long come in."

The conversation dropped, just as the voice of the orator standing on the
left of the Speaker rose to his peroration.

It was a peroration of considerable eloquence, subtly graduated through a
rising series of rhetorical questions, till it finally culminated and broke
in the ringing sentences:

"Destroy the ordered hierarchy of English land, and you will sweep away a
growth of centuries which would not be where it is if it did not in the
main answer to the needs and reflect the character of Englishmen. Reform
and develop it if you will; bring in modern knowledge to work upon it;
change, expand, without breaking it; appeal to the sense of property,
while enormously diffusing property; help the peasant without slaying the
landlord; in other words, put aside rash, meddlesome revolution, and set
yourselves to build on the ancient foundations of our country what may
yet serve the new time! Then you will have an _English_, a national
policy. It happens to be the Tory policy. Every principle of it is violated
by the monstrous bill you have just brought in. We shall oppose it by every
means and every device in our power!"

[Illustration: THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR
ROSE TO HIS PERORATION]