 or, it may be - I shall place this girl at the same
school with your sisters for such a time, during which you will give me your
word and honour to see her only so often. If, at the expiration of that time,
when she has so far profited by her advantages as that you may be upon a fair
equality, you are both in the same mind, I will do my part to make you happy. I
know of several cases such as I describe, my Lady, and I think they indicate to
me my own course now.«
    Sir Leicester's magnificence explodes. Calmly, but terribly.
    »Mr. Rouncewell,« says Sir Leicester, with his right hand in the breast of
his blue coat - the attitude of state in which he is painted in the gallery: »do
you draw a parallel between Chesney Wold, and a -« here he resists a disposition
to choke - »a factory?«
    »I need not reply, Sir Leicester, that the two places are very different;
but, for the purposes of this case, I think a parallel may be justly drawn
between them.«
    Sir Leicester directs his majestic glance down one side of the long
drawing-room, and up the other, before he can believe that he is awake.
    »Are you aware, sir, that this young woman whom my Lady - my Lady - has
placed near her person, was brought up at the village school outside the gates?«
    »Sir Leicester, I am quite aware of it. A very good school it is, and
handsomely supported by this family.«
    »Then, Mr. Rouncewell,« returns Sir Leicester, »the application of what you
have said is, to me, incomprehensible.«
    »Will it be more comprehensible, Sir Leicester, if I say,« the ironmaster is
reddening a little, »that I do not regard the village school as teaching
everything desirable to be known by my son's wife?«
    From the village school of Chesney Wold, intact as it is this minute, to the
whole framework of society: from the whole framework of society, to the
aforesaid framework receiving tremendous cracks in consequence of people
(ironmasters, lead-mistresses, and what not) not minding their catechism, and
getting out of the station unto which they are called - necessarily and for
ever, according to Sir Leicester's rapid logic, the first station in which they
happen to find themselves; and from that, to their educating other people out of
their stations, and so obliterating
