Her remark was, at any rate, quite audible to her next-door
neighbor, who again threw her a swift, stabbing look, of no more avail,
however, than its predecessors.
"Who is that lady in the corner--do you mind telling me?"
The query was timidly whispered in the ear of Marcia Coryston by a veiled
lady, who on the departure of some other persons had come to stand beside
her.
"She is Mrs. Prideaux." said Miss Coryston, stiffly.
"The wife of the Prime Minister!" The voice showed emotion.
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.
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