"
The voice of little Ann answered loudly:
"No; I'm coming back by myself."
The car starting, drowned discussion.
Lord Valleys, motoring, somewhat pathetically illustrated the invasion
of institutions by their destroyer, Science. A supporter of the turf,
and not long since Master of Foxhounds, most of whose soul (outside
politics) was in horses, he had been, as it were, compelled by common
sense, not only to tolerate, but to take up and even press forward
the cause of their supplanters. His instinct of self-preservation was
secretly at work, hurrying him to his own destruction; forcing him to
persuade himself that science and her successive victories over brute
nature could be wooed into the service of a prestige which rested on a
crystallized and stationary base. All this keeping pace with the times,
this immersion in the results of modern discoveries, this speeding-up
of existence so that it was all surface and little root--the increasing
volatility, cosmopolitanism, and even commercialism of his life, on
which he rather prided himself as a man of the world--was, with a
secrecy too deep for his perception, cutting at the aloofness logically
demanded of one in his position. Stubborn, and not spiritually subtle,
though by no means dull in practical matters, he was resolutely letting
the waters bear him on, holding the tiller firmly, without perceiving
that he was in the vortex of a whirlpool.
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