d buried;
and this is a dreadful thing. 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, merely that they
might build and send down to posterity this same fair fame. It is a
bold man, or a wicked man, who will dare lightly to bring the efforts
of so many lives to naught! In the thought of these centuries of
endeavour, the sacrifice of mere personal happiness does not seem so
great an affair after all. The Family Name has taken to itself a soul.
It is a living thing. It may be worked for, it may be nourished by
affection, it may even be worshipped. Men may give 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. Dominic. The tearing of the heart from the bosom often
proves to be a mortal hurt when there is nothing to put in the gap of
its emptiness. Not so when a tradition like this may partly take its
place.

These, and more subtle considerations, were the noblest elements of
Bennington de Laney's doubts. But perhaps they were no more potent than
some others which rushed through the breach made for them in the young
man's decision.

He had always lived so much at home that he had come to accept the home
point of view without question. That is to say, he never examined the
value of his parent's ideas, because it never occurred to him to doubt
them. He had no perspective.

In a way, then, he accepted as axioms the social tenets held by his
mother, or the business methods practised by his father. He believed
that elderly men should speak precisely, and in grammatical, but
colourless English. He believed also that people should, in society,
conduct themselves according to the fashion-plate pattern designed by
Mrs. de Laney. He believed these things, not because he was a fool, or
shallow, or lacking in humour, or snobbish, but because nothing had
ever happened to cause him to examine his beliefs closely, that he
might appreciate what they really were. One of these views was, that
cultured people were of a class in themselves, and could not and should
not mix with other classes. Mrs. de Laney entertained a horror of
vulgarity. So deep-rooted was this horror that a remote taint of it was
sufficient to thrust forever out