, and on varieties of corn.«
    »Yes,« Miss Halkett said, pausing, »and I know you would not talk down to
me, but the use of imagery makes me feel that I am addressed as a primitive
intelligence.«
    »That 's the fault of my trying at condensation, as the hieroglyphists put
an animal for a paragraph. I am incorrigible, you see; but the lecture in prose
must be for by-and-by, if you care to have it.«
    »If you care to read it to me. Did a single hieroglyphic figure stand for so
much?«
    »I have never deciphered one.«
    »You have been speaking to me too long in earnest, Mr. Austin!«
    »I accept the admonition, though it is wider than the truth. Have you ever
consented to listen to politics before?«
    Cecilia reddened faintly, thinking of him who had taught her to listen, and
of her previous contempt of the subject.
    A political exposition devoid of imagery was given to her next day on the
sunny South-western terrace of Mount Laurels, when it was only by mentally
translating it into imagery that she could advance a step beside her
intellectual guide; and she was ashamed of the volatility of her ideas. She was
constantly comparing Mr. Austin and Nevil Beauchamp, seeing that the senior and
the junior both talked to her with the familiar recognition of her understanding
which was a compliment without the gross corporeal phrase. But now she made
another discovery, that should have been infinitely more of a compliment, and it
was bewildering, if not repulsive to her: - could it be credited? Mr. Austin was
a firm believer in new and higher destinies for women. He went farther than she
could concede the right of human speculation to go; he was, in fact, as Radical
there as Nevil Beauchamp politically; and would not the latter innovator stare,
perchance frown conservatively, at a prospect of woman taking council, in
council, with men upon public affairs, like the women in the Germania! Mr.
Austin, if this time he talked in earnest, deemed that Englishwomen were on the
road to win such a promotion, and would win it ultimately. He said soberly that
he saw more certain indications of the reality of progress among women than any
at present shown by men. And he was professedly temperate. He was but for
opening avenues to the means of livelihood for them, and leaving it to their
strength to conquer the position they might wish to win. His belief that they
would do so was
