The Last Post by Ford Madox Ford — Read

No, you could not ignore Fittleworth. As a foxhunting squire he might be an extinct monster -- though, then again, he might not: there was no knowing. But as a wicked, dark adept with bad women, and one come of a race that had been adepts with women good and bad for generations, he was about as dangerous a person as you could find. That gross, slow, earthy, obstinate fellow Gunning could stand grouchily up to Fittleworth, answer him back and chance what Fittleworth could do to him. So could any cottager. But then they were his people. She wasn't... she, Sylvia Tietjens, and she did not believe she could afford to outface him. Nor could half England.

Old Campion wanted India -- probably she herself wanted Campion to have India. Groby Great Tree was cut down, and if you have not the distinction, if you rid yourself of the distinction, of Groby Great Tree just to wound a man to the heart -- you may as well take India. Times were changing, but there was no knowing how the circumstances of a man like Fittleworth changed. He sat his horse like a monkey and gazed out over his land as his people had done for generations, bastard or legitimate. And it was all very well to regard him as merely a country squire married to a Transatlantic nobody and so out of it. He hopped up to London -- he and his Cammie too -- and he passed unnoticeably about the best places and could drop a word or so here and there; and for all the Countess' foreign and unknown origin, she had access to ears to which it was dangerous to have access -- dangerous for aspirants to India. Campion might have his war-services and his constituency. But Cammie Fittleworth was popular in the right places, and Fittleworth had his hounds and, when it came even to constituencies, the tradesmen of a couple of counties. And was wicked.