CHAPTER II.

The Significance of a Supper-Table.


The Aycons of Aycon Knoll have always been a hard-headed, levelheaded
race. We have had no enthusiasms, few ambitions, no illusions, and not
many scandals. We keep our heads on our shoulders and our purses in our
pockets. We do not rise very high, but we have never sunk. We abide at the
Knoll from generation to generation, deeming our continued existence in
itself a service to the state and an honor to the house. We think more
highly of ourselves than we admit, and allow ourselves to smile when we
walk in to dinner behind the new nobility. We grow just a little richer
with every decade, and add a field or two to our domains once in five
years. The gaps made by falling rents we have filled by judicious
purchases of land near rising towns; and we have no doubt that there lies
before us a future as long and prosperous as our past has been. We are not
universally popular, and we see in the fact a tribute to our valuable
qualities.

I venture to mention these family virtues and characteristics because it
has been thought in some quarters that I displayed them but to a very
slight degree in the course of the expedition on which I was now embarked.
The impression is a mistaken one. As I have said before, I did nothing
that was not forced upon me. Any of my ancestors would, I am sure, have
done the same, had they chanced to be thrown under similar circumstances
into the society of Mme. de Saint-Maclou and of the other persons whom I
was privileged to meet; and had those other persons happened to act in the