“No, I hardly think you could,” said May, reflectively.  “Your social position doesn’t allow of that.  Of course you help to make laws, which is more important.”

“If I really did so; but I don’t.  I have no more part in law-making than you have.”

“But, why not?” asked May, gazing at him in surprise.  “Surely that is a duty about which you can have no doubt.”

“I neglect all duties,” he answered.

“How strange!  Is it your principle?  You are not an Anarchist, Lord Dymchurch?”

“Practically, I fancy that’s just what I am.  Theoretically, no.  Suppose,” he added, with his pleasantest smile, “you advise me as to what use I can make of my life.”

The man was speaking without control of his tongue.  He had sunk into a limp passivity; in part, it might be, the result of the drowsily humming air; in part, a sort of hypnotism due to May’s talk and the feminine perfume which breathed from her.  He understood the idleness of what fell from his lips, but it pleased him to be idle.  Therewithal—­strange contradiction—­he was trying to persuade himself that, more likely than not, this chattering girl had it in her power to make him an active, useful man, to draw him out of his mouldy hermitage and set him in the world’s broad daylight.  The analogy of Lord Honeybourne came into his mind; Lord Honeybourne, whose marriage had been the turning-point of his career, and whose wife, in many respects, bore a resemblance to May Tomalin.

“I shall have to think very seriously about it,” May was replying.  “But nothing could interest me more.  You don’t feel at all inclined for public life?”

Their dialogue was interrupted by the hostess, who came forward with a gentleman she wished to present to Miss Tomalin.  Hearing the name—­Mr. Langtoft—­Dymchurch regarded him with curiosity, and, moving aside with Lady Honeybourne as she withdrew, he inquired whether this was the Mr. Langtoft.

“It is,” the hostess answered.  “Do you take an interest in his work?  Would you like to know him?”

Dymchurch declined the introduction for the present, but he was glad to have seen the man, just now frequently spoken of in newspapers, much lauded, and vehemently attacked.  A wealthy manufacturer, practically lord of a swarming township in Lancashire, Mr. Langtoft was trying to get into his own hands the education of all the lower-class children growing up around his mill chimneys.  He disapproved of the board-school; he looked with still less favour on the schools of the clergy; and, regardless of expense, was establishing schools of his own, where what he called “civic instruction” was gratuitously imparted.  The idea closely resembled that which Dyce Lashmar had borrowed from his French sociologist, and Dyce had lately been in correspondence with Mr. Langtoft.  Lashmar’s name, indeed, was now passing between the reformer and Miss Tomalin.

“His work,” said Dymchurch to himself.  “Yes, everybody has his work—­except me.”