Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/254

 added Friga. ‘My fear about your god, dearest mamma, is that before long he will get—’

A shriek of laughter from the other two girls was loud enough to drown completely the remainder of Lady Friga’s sentence. Probably, what she said was, ‘will get his blessing disregarded.’

Seeing that this was a fresh discomfiture for her hostess, Lesbia said seriously,—

‘Joking apart, Lady Humnoddie, I think that women of the world like you must perceive better than others, that the old notions look like being played out now. When from the Cornish coast I heard the cannon roar at Roche’s Tower all that dreadful day, I seemed to listen to the knell of an epoch which indeed it is high time were dead.’

‘I believe that too, Lesbie,’ said her mother, ‘else why should an event, which at the time was remote, have affected me in that supernatural manner? The first part of my dream has come true.’

‘When the fruit hangs fully ripe,’ said Mr Bristley, in slow and measured accents, ‘any touch will bring it to the ground. Or, as was said of old, where the carcase is, thither will the vultures be gathered. It may be a battle lost in one place or another, at Dorking, at Guildford, at Queenstown—where you will; it may be a visitation of quite another, perhaps a direr, sort; but the teaching of history—notably of that Judaic history with which we are so familiar—goes to show that where national advantages have been abused, and national opportunities thrown away, the catastrophe—whatever form it is to take—is not very far off.’

‘But if the decencies of life are to be upset, and good society ruined,’ said the Marchioness bitterly, ‘I shall give it up and go and live abroad.’

‘I hope you may find there the personal relief you