THE SENSE OF THE PAST
The defunct worthy, with whatever discomfort of conscience, had had a high hand for affairs of profit and had flourished as the undoer of virtue or confidence or whatever other shaky equilibrium is often observed to flourish. The proofs of his mastery were naturally, however, much more evident to the followers in his line than any ground for imputations less flattering; with which it seemed further unmistakeable that a posterity in such good humour with itself and its traditions might have even enough of that grace to spare for cases of the minor felicity. How at any rate had it come about that the minor felicity, of all things in the world, could be a distinguishable mark of the English Pendrels, the legend of any awkward accident or any foregone advantage in whose annals would so scantly have emerged as matter for free reference? This was a question that might with the extraordinary swell of our young man's present vision find itself as answerable as the next before or the next after. Every question became answerable, in its turn, the moment it was touched; so that when his companion, as she had so bravely become, mentioned the repair of the family breach he jumped at the occasion for a full illustration of the subject.
"You see how little difference your mother's marriage made to us, with the extinction of our name here involved in it; since if Pendrels had at last failed us, for the pleasure over there of
127
