to me. He did not tell you his story, then, Mr. Thain?" "He showed no inclination to do so--in fact he avoided so far as possible all discussion of his past." "Richard Vont," the Marquis continued, raising his eyes to the ceiling, "was one of those sturdy, thick-headed, unintelligent yeomen who have been spoiled by the trifle of education doled out to their grandfathers, their fathers and themselves. A few hundred years ago they formed excellent retainers to the nobles under whose patronage they lived. Today, in these hideously degenerate days, Mr. Thain, when half the world has moved forward and half stood still, they are an anachronism. They find no seemly place in modern life." David Thain sat very still. There was just a little flash in his eyes, which came and went as sunlight might have gleamed across naked steel. "But I must not forget," his host went on tolerantly, "that I am speaking now to one who must to some extent have lost his sense of social proportion by a prolonged sojourn in a country where life is more or less a jumble." "You refer to America?" "Naturally! As a country resembling more than anything a gigantic sausage machine wherein all races and men of all social status are broken up on the wheel, puffed up with false ideas, and thrown out upon the world, a newly fledged, cunning, but singularly ignorant race of individuals, America possesses great interest to those--to those, in short," the Marquis declared, with a little wave of the hand, "whom such things interest. I am English, my forefathers were Saxon, my instincts are perhaps feudal. That is why I regard the case of Richard Vont from a point of view which you might possibly fail to appreciate. Would it bore you if I continue?" "Not in the least," David Thain assured him. "Richard Vont was head-keeper at Mandeleys when I succeeded to the title and estates, an advent which occurred a few years after my wife's death. He was already occupying a peculiar position there, owing to the generosity of my predecessor, whose life he had had the good fortune to save. He had very foolishly married above him in station--the girl was a schoolmistress, I believe. When I came to Mandeleys, I found him living there, a widower with one daughter, and a little boy, his nephew. The girl inherited her mother's superiority of station and intellect and was naturally unhappy. I noticed her with interest, and she responded. Consequences which in the days of our ancestors, Mr. Thain, would have been esteemed an honor to the persons concerned, ensued. Richard Vont, like an ignorant clodhopper, viewed the matter from the wrong standpoint.... You said something, I believe? Pardon me. I sometimes fancy that I am a little deaf in my left ear." The Marquis leaned forward but David Thain shook his head. His lips 

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