The friendly old gentleman, as he had found him from the first,
became doubly and trebly so in that position which brings out whatever
warmth of heart an Englishman has, and gives it to him if he has none.
The impressionable and sympathetic character of Middleton answered to the
kindness of his host; and by the time the meal was concluded, the two
were conversing with almost as much zest and friendship as if they were
similar in age, even fellow-countrymen, and had known one another all
their life-time. Middleton's secret, it may be supposed, came often to
the tip of his tongue; but still he kept it within, from a natural
repugnance to bring out the one romance of his life. The talk, however,
necessarily ran much upon topics among which this one would have come in
without any extra attempt to introduce it.
"This decay of old families," said the Master, "is much greater than
would appear on the surface of things. We have such a reluctance to part
with them, that we are content to see them continued by any fiction,
through any indirections, rather than to dispense with old names. In your
country, I suppose, there is no such reluctance; you are willing that one
generation should blot out all that preceded it, and be itself the newest
and only age of the world."
"Not quite so," answered Middleton; "at any rate, if there be such a
feeling in the people at large, I doubt whether, even in England, those
who fancy themselves possessed of claims to birth, cherish them more as a
treasure than we do.
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