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subtle aura of the higher refineenerations--which, to an eye accustoradations of moral beauty, possesses a peach-blow iridescence of its

own Froht and

courtesy are stilted and useless Fronity of noblesse oblige

So ould have none set down Bennington de Laney as a prig or a snob

because he did not at once decide for his heart as against his

aristocratic instincts Not only all his early education, but the life

lessons of ht him to set a

fictitious value on social position He was a de Laney on both sides

He had never been allowed to forget it A long line of forefathers,

proud-eyed in their gilded fraations they had bequeathed to this last representative of their

race When one belongs to a great farace or failure reflects not alone on his own

reputation, but it sullies the fair fa For all these old Puritans and Cavaliers,

these knights and barons, these king's councillors and scholars, have

perchance lived out the long years of their lives with all good intent

and purpose and with all earnestness of execution, ht build and send down to posterity this same fair fahtly to bring the efforts

of so ht of these centuries of

endeavour, the sacrifice of reat an affair after all The Fa It may be worked for, it may be nourished by

affection, it ive their lives to it

with as great a devotion, with as exalted a sense of renunciation, and

as lofty a joy in that renunciation, as those who vow allegiance to St

Francis or St Do of the heart from the boso to put in the gap of

its emptiness Not so when a tradition like this may partly take its

place