 begun to think that he would not come
again; while Catherine was more sensitive to his frequent brusquerie, which she
rather resented as a needless effort to assert his footing of superior in every
sense except the conventional.
    Meanwhile enters the expectant peer, Mr. Bult, an esteemed party man who,
rather neutral in private life, had strong opinions concerning the districts of
the Niger, was much at home also in the Brazils, spoke with decision of affairs
in the South Seas, was studious of his Parliamentary and itinerant speeches, and
had the general solidity and suffusive pinkness of a healthy Briton on the
central table-land of life. Catherine, aware of a tacit understanding that he
was an undeniable husband for an heiress, had nothing to say against him but
that he was thoroughly tiresome to her. Mr. Bult was amiably confident, and had
no idea that his insensibility to counterpoint could ever be reckoned against
him. Klesmer he hardly regarded in the light of a serious human being who ought
to have a vote; and he did not mind Miss Arrowpoint's addiction to music any
more than her probable expenses in antique lace. He was consequently a little
amazed at an after-dinner outburst of Klesmer's on the lack of idealism in
English politics, which left all mutuality between distant races to be
determined simply by the need of a market: the crusades, to his mind, had at
least this excuse, that they had a banner of sentiment round which generous
feelings could rally: of course, the scoundrels rallied too, but what then? they
rally in equal force round your advertisement van of »Buy cheap, sell dear.« On
this theme Klesmer's eloquence, gesticulatory and other, went on for a little
while like stray fireworks accidentally ignited, and then sank into immovable
silence. Mr. Bult was not surprised that Klesmer's opinions should be flighty,
but was astonished at his command of English idiom and his ability to put a
point in a way that would have told at a constituents' dinner - to be accounted
for probably by his being a Pole, or a Czech, or something of that fermenting
sort, in a state of political refugeeism which had obliged him to make a
profession of his music; and that evening in the drawing-room he for the first
time went up to Klesmer at the piano, Miss Arrowpoint being near, and said -
    »I had no idea before that you were a political man.« Klesmer's only answer
was to fold his arms, put out his nether lip, and stare at Mr. Bult.
