“The only way--the only way, Leonard. There will be no clean breast at all, and that venomous beast will have to come to me again. I am so glad that I came here. You have got more sense than all the rest of us put together.” CHAPTER XVII YET ANOTHER! When he was gone Leonard threw himself into the nearest chair, and looked around him. He gazed with bewildered face, not upon the study full of books, the papers which showed the man of learning, the reports which spoke of the man of affairs, the engravings on the wall which spoke of the man of culture. These are accidental: anyone may show them. The artist sprung from the gutter, the self-made scholar, the mere mushroom, might possess and exhibit all these things. He saw strewn around him the wreck and ruin of all that he had hitherto considered the essential, namely, the family honour. There are none so full of family pride as those who show it least. To Leonard it had always been the greatest happiness merely to feel that the records of his family went back to times beyond the memory of man. It was not a thing to be talked about, but a prop, a stay, a shield, anything that helps to make a man at peace with himself. No one knew when the Campaignes first obtained their estate; in every century he found his ancestors--not distinguished--indeed, they had never produced a man of the first rank--but playing a part, and that not an unworthy one. It was the record of an honourable line. There were no traitors or turncoats in it: the men were without reproach, the women without a spot or stain among them all. I suppose that nobody, either at school or college, ever knew or suspected the profound pride which lay at the heart of this quiet and self-possessed scholar. It was the kind of pride which is free from arrogance. He was a gentleman; all his people had been gentlemen. By gentlemen he meant people of good birth and breeding, and of blameless life. The word, we well know, is now used so as to include the greater part of male man. To most people it means nothing and matters nothing. Even with people who use limitations the door is always open to those who choose to lead the gentle life, and are privileged to follow the work which belongs to the gentle life. He was a gentleman--he and all his people. He had no feeling of superiority, not the least--no more than a man may entertain a feeling of superiority on account of his stature. Nor had he the least feeling of contempt for those who have no such advantages. A man who has a grandfather may affect to despise one who has no grandfather, but not a man who has a long line terminating like the ancestry of a Saxon king in dim shapes which are probably Woden, Thor, and Freyya.