“Barbaric luxury,” Thorndyke interrupted. “It’s barbarous to bring children up as those two were--I know whom you mean. The girl had her own suite of rooms almost from her birth, her own maid, her own trap. Even when there was an affectation of simplicity it cost enough to have swamped her grandfather’s general store at Meekins’s Cross Roads, where he laid the foundation of his fortune. When she came out in society it simply meant more of everything. No daughter of the Cæsars was ever more conscious of the gulf between her and the common people--I say common people with the deepest respect for the term--than this girl is conscious of the gulf between herself and the class to which her grandparents belonged. The young man’s story was the same _da capo_, except that he was given a boy’s luxuries instead of a girl’s. It has been carefully concealed from them by their parents that their grandparents swept, dusted, chopped wood, traded at country stores, and did all those plain but useful and respectable things which made their fortune. To hear them talk about ‘grandmamma’ and ‘grandpapa’ is the very essence of simplicity.” “And yet those people constitute the most exclusive set in Washington,” said Crane, angrily, as if thereby some wrong was inflicted on him. “Naturally,” replied Thorndyke. “Don’t you see that the first result of their prosperity in their own community was to segregate them from their less fortunate friends and neighbours? Don’t you see how inevitably it came about that their children were separated from their neighbours’ children? And in the end they were drawn from the Circlevilles and the Meekins’s Cross Roads by sheer necessity? They became fugitives, as it were, from their own class, and how natural it was for them to be afraid of their own and every other class except the recognised few, and to build up a wall around themselves and their children.” “I wonder if you would dare to use that word class on the floor of the House?” asked Crane. “I would dare to but I shouldn’t care to,” answered Thorndyke. “One reason why I have so little to say on the floor of the House is because it involves many explanations to men who know just as well what you mean as you do, and agree with you thoroughly. But there’s Buncombe County to be considered.” “At all events,” said Crane, returning to himself as a subject of consideration, “this social side of life appeals to me powerfully--too powerfully, I am afraid. I feel an odd sort of kinship with those old ladies of seventy that I see going the rounds in Paris gowns and high-heeled shoes, with their scanty white hair crimped and curled within an inch of their lives. It’s serious business with them; and, by George, it’s serious with me, too. Of course I am a blamed fool for acknowledging so much.” “Not in the least. But you must know that it can only be a pastime with you. There is Circleville, and Annette, and the babies----”