Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/110

THE GOLDEN BOWL prosaic. "He knew, Amerigo, what he was about. And I don't mean the old one."

"I know what you mean!" his wife bravely threw off.

"The old one"—he pointed his effect—"isn't the only discoverer in the family."

"Oh as much as you like! If he discovered America—or got himself honoured as if he had—his successors were in due time to discover the Americans. And it was one of them in particular, doubtless, who was to discover how patriotic we are."

"Wouldn't this be the same one," the Colonel asked, "who really discovered what you call the connexion?"

She gave him a look. "The connexion's a true thing—the connexion's perfectly historic. Your insinuations recoil upon your cynical mind. Don't you understand," she asked, "that the history of such people is known, root and branch, at every moment of its course?"

"Oh it's all right," said Bob Assingham.

"Go to the British Museum," his companion continued with spirit.

"And what am I to do there?"

"There's a whole immense room, or recess, or department, or whatever, filled with books written about his family alone. You can see for yourself?"

"Have you seen for your self?"

She faltered but an instant. "Certainly—I went one day with Maggie. We looked him up, so to say. They were most civil." And she fell again into the current her husband had slightly ruffled. "The effect 80