The Great House by Stanley J. Weyman — Read

Not a word or hint of John Audley's illness had come to Basset's ears. At the time of the alarm he had been in London, and it was not until some days later that he took his seat in the morning train to return to Stafford. On his way to town, and for some days after his arrival, he had been buoyed up by plans, nebulous indeed, but sufficient. He came back low in his mind and in poor spirits. The hopes, if not the aspirations, which Colet's enthusiasm had generated in him had died down, and the visit to Francis Place had done nothing to revive them.

Some greatness in the man, a largeness of ideas, an echo of the revolutionary days when the sanest saw visions, Basset was forced to own. But the two stood too far apart, the inspired tailor and the country squire, for sympathy. They were divided by too wide a gulf of breeding and prejudice to come together. Basset was not even a Radical, and his desire to improve things, and to better the world, fell very far short of the passion of humanity which possessed the aged Republican-the man who for half a century had been so forward in all their movements that his fellows had christened him the "_Old Postilion_."