Page:Hope-indiscretions of duchess.djvu/23



HE 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 expedi- 11