The nation would do away with them in time! Meanwhile it might at least be asked of them that they should practise their profession of landowning, such as it was, with greater conscience and intelligence--that they should not shirk its opportunities or idle them away.

And she could point out those who did both--scandalously, intolerably.

Once or twice she thought passionately of Minta Hurd, washing and mending all day, in her damp cottage; or of the Pattons in "the parish house," thankful after sixty years of toil for a hovel where the rain came through the thatch, and where the smoke choked you, unless, with the thermometer below freezing-point, you opened the door to the blast.

Why should _these_ people have all the gay clothes, the flowers, the jewels, the delicate food--all the delight and all the leisure?
And those, nothing! Her soul rose against what she saw as she stood there, going through her part.

Wharton's very words, every inflection of his voice was in her ears, playing chorus to the scene.
But when these first introductions, these little empty talks of three or four phrases apiece, and all of them alike, were nearly done with, Marcella looked eagerly round for Mary Harden.