t
and all doors locked. It was a threadbare, well-worn house that he thus
examined, as if the inmates had grazed down all luxuriance and plenty to
the verge of decency; and in the night, bereft of life, bare places
and ancient blemishes were unpleasantly visible. Katharine Hilbery, he
thought, would condemn it off-hand.

CHAPTER III

Denham had accused Katharine Hilbery of belonging to one of the most
distinguished families in England, and if any one will take the trouble
to consult Mr. Galton's "Hereditary Genius," he will find that this
assertion is not far from the truth. The Alardyces, the Hilberys, the
Millingtons, and the Otways seem to prove that intellect is a possession
which can be tossed from one member of a certain group to another almost
indefinitely, and with apparent certainty that the brilliant gift will
be safely caught and held by nine out of ten of the privileged race.
They had been conspicuous judges and admirals, lawyers and servants of
the State for some years before the richness of the soil culminated
in the rarest flower that any family can boast, a great writer, a poet
eminent among the poets of England, a Richard Alardyce; and having
produced him, they proved once more the amazing virtues of their race
by proceeding unconcernedly again with their usual task of breeding
distinguished men. They had sailed with Sir John Franklin to the North
Pole, and ridden with Havelock to the Relief of Lucknow, and when they
were not lighthouses firmly based on rock for the guidance of their
generation, they were steady, serviceable candles, illuminating the
ordinary chambers of daily life. Whatever profession you looked
at, there was a Warburton or an Alardyce, a Millington or a Hilbery
somewhere in authority and prominence.

It may be said, indeed, that English society being what it is, no very
great merit is required, once you bear a well-known name, to put you
into a position where it is easier on the whole to be eminent than
obscure. And if this is true of the sons, even the daughters,
even in the nineteenth century, are apt to become people of
importance--philanthropists and educationalists if they are spinsters,
and the wives of distinguished men if they marry. It is true that there
were several lamentable exceptions to this rule in the Alardyce group,
which seems to indicate that the cadets of such houses go more rapidly
to the bad than the children of ordinary fathers and mothers, as if it
were