caster Gate was a thing difficult to explain. One
knew people in general by something they had to
show, something that, either for them or against,
could be touched or named or proved; and she could
think of no other case of a value taken as so great
and yet flourishing untested. His value was his
future, which had somehow got itself as accepted
by Aunt Maud as if it had been his good cook or his
steam-launch. She, Kate, didn't mean she thought
him a humbug; he might do great things but they
were all, as yet, so to speak, he had done. On the
other hand it was of course something of an achieve
ment, and not open to every one, to have got one's
self taken so seriously by Aunt Maud. The best
thing about him, doubtless, on the whole, was that
Aiint Maud believed in him. She was often fantas
tic, but she knew a humbug, and no, Lord Mark
wasn't that. He had been a short time in the House,
on the Tory side, but had lost his seat on the first
opportunity, and this was all he had to point to.
However, he pointed to nothing; which was very
possibly just a sign of his real cleverness, one of
those that the really clever had in common with the
really void. Even Aunt Maud frequently admitted
that there was a good deal, for her view of him, to
come up in the rear. And he wasn't meanwhile
himself indifferent indifferent to himself for
he was working Lancaster Gate for all it was
worth: just as it was, no doubt, working him,
and just as the working and the worked were in

[[197]]

p196 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p197w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p198

v?