Now that was a body-blow; for it was Aunt Nannie’s own boys who had adopted this custom, which Sylvia had heard sternly reprehended in the family councils. Aunt Nannie flushed, and Uncle Mandeville made haste to interpose—“Sylvia, you should not speak so to your aunt.” “I don’t see why not,” declared the girl. “I am saying nothing but what is true; and I have been attacked in the thing that is most precious in life to me.” Here the Major felt it his duty to enter the debate. “Sylvia,” he said, “I don’t think you quite realize your aunt’s feelings. It is no selfish motive that leads her to make these objections.” “Not selfish?” asked the girl. “She’s admitted it’s her fear for her own daughters, Papa——” “It’s just exactly as much for your own sister, Sylvia.” It was the voice of Celeste, entering the discussion for the first time. Sylvia stared at her, astonished, and saw her eyes alight, her face as set and hard as Aunt Nannie’s. Sylvia realized all at once that she had an enemy in her own house. She was trembling violently as she made reply. “Then, Celeste, I have to give up everything that means happiness in life to me, because I might frighten away rich suitors from my sister?” “Sylvia,” put in the Major, gravely, before Celeste could speak, “you must not say things like that. It is not because Frank Shirley is poor that we are objecting. The pride of the Castlemans is not simply a pride of worldly power.” “She degrades us and degrades herself when she implies it!” exclaimed Aunt Nannie. “It is a high and great pride,” continued the Major. “The pride of a race of men and women who have scorned ignoble conduct and held themselves above all dishonor. That is no weak or shallow thing, Sylvia. It is a thing which sustains and upholds us at every moment of our lives: that we are living, not merely for our individual selves, but for all the generations that are to be. It may seem a cruel thing that the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children, but it is a law of God. It was something that Bob Shirley himself said to me, with tears in his eyes—that his children and his children’s children would have to pay for what had been done.” “But, Papa!” cried Sylvia. “They don’t have to pay it, except that we make them pay it!” “You are mistaken, my child,” said the Major, quietly. “It’s not we alone. It was the whole of society that condemned him. We cannot possibly wipe out the blot on the Shirley escutcheon.” “We can only drag ourselves down with them!” exclaimed Aunt Nannie. “Why, it’s just as if we said that going to prison was nothing!” cried Celeste. “You must remember how many people there are looking up to us, Sylvia,” put in Uncle Mandeville, solemnly.