‘Well, they want to feel earnest,’ Mr Touchett allowed; ‘but it seems as if they took it out in theories mostly. Their radical views are a kind of amusement; they’ve got to have some amusement, and they might have coarser tastes than that. You see they’re very luxurious, and these progressive ideas are about their biggest luxury. They make them feel moral and yet don’t damage their position. They think a great deal of their position; don’t let one of them ever persuade you he doesn’t, for if you were to proceed on that basis you’d be pulled up very short.’

Isabel followed her uncle’s argument, which he unfolded with his quaint distinctness, most attentively, and though she was unacquainted with the British aristocracy she found it in harmony with her general impressions of human nature. But she felt moved to put in a protest on Lord Warburton’s behalf. ‘I don’t believe Lord Warburton’s a humbug; I don’t what the others are. I should like to see Lord Warburton put to the test.’

‘Heaven deliver me from my friends!’ Mr Touchett answered. ‘Lord Warburton’s a very amiable young man—a very fine young man. He has a hundred thousand a year. He owns fifty thousand acres of the soil of this little island and ever so many other things besides. He has half a dozen houses to live in. He has a seat in Parliament as I have one at my own dinner-table. He has elegant tastes—cares for literature, for art, for science, for charming young ladies. The most elegant is his taste for the new views. It affords him a great deal of pleasure—more perhaps than anything else, except the young ladies. His old house over there—what does he call it, Lockleigh?—is very attractive; but I don’t think it’s as pleasant as this. That doesn’t matter, however—he has so many others. His views don’t hurt any one as far as I can see; they certainly don’t hurt himself. And if there were to be a revolution he would come off very easily. They wouldn’t touch him, they’d leave him as he is: he’s too much liked.’

‘Ah, he couldn’t be a martyr even if he wished!’ Isabel sighed. ‘That’s a very poor position.’

‘He’ll never be a martyr unless you make him one,’ said the old man.

Isabel shook her head; there might have been something laughable in the fact that she did it with a touch of melancholy. ‘I shall never make any one a martyr.’

‘You’ll never be one, I hope.’

‘I hope not. But you don’t pity Lord Warburton then as Ralph does?’

Her uncle looked at her a while with genial acuteness. ‘Yes, I do, after all!’