those who read their lives away in this. Old Mr. Dare's
interests and affections had all been bound in morocco and vellum. A
volume lay open on the table, where the old man had put it down beside
the leather arm-chair where he had sat, with his back to the light,
summer and winter, winter and summer, for so many years.

No one had moved it since. A wavering pencil-mark had scored the page
here and there. Dare shut it up, and replaced it among its brethren. How
_triste_ and silent the house seemed! He wondered what the old uncle had
been like, and sauntered into the staircase hall, much in need of
varnish, where the Dares that had gone before him lived. But these were
too ancient to have his predecessor among them. He went into the long
oak-panelled dining-room, where above the high carved dado were more
Dares. Perhaps that man with the book was his namesake, the departed
Alfred Dare. He wondered vaguely how he should look when he also took
his place among his relations. Nature had favored him with a better
mustache than most men, but he had a premonitory feeling that the very
mustache itself, though undeniable in real life, would look out of
keeping among these bluff, frank, light-haired people, of whom it seemed
he--he who had never been near them before--was the living
representative.

A sudden access of pleasurable dignity came over him as he sat on the
dining-table, the great mahogany dining-table, which still showed
vestiges of a by-gone polish, and was heavily dented by long years of
hammered applause. These ancestors of his! He would not disgrace them. A
few minutes ago he had been wondering whether Vandon might not be let.
Now, with one of the rapid transitions habitual to him, he resolved that
he would live at Vandon, that in all things he would be as they had
been. He would become that vague, indefinable, to him mythical
personage--a "country squire." Fortunately, he had a neat leg for a
stocking. It was lost, so to speak, in his present mode of dress; but he
felt that it would appear to advantage in the perpetual knickerbockers
which he supposed it would be his lot to wear. It would also become his
duty and his pleasure to marry. For those who tread in safety the
slippery heights of married life he felt a true esteem. It would be a
strain, no doubt, a great effort; but at this moment he was capable of
anything. The finger of duty was plain. And with that adorable Miss
Ruth, with or without a fortune--Alas! h