Ethan watched him, unmoved, with a kind of unsympathetic fascination.
"I think," said the young man, before his uncle found his voice again, "you are going on to say something I had to try to disabuse my mind of, years ago, when my own health smashed up before I went to France."
John Gano dropped into the rocking-chair by the fire, and lay back a moment with closed eyes and laboring breath.
"I didn't know," he said, faintly, "that you'd had your warning, but I see"—he opened his eyes suddenly—"I see that your New England blood is too thin, too office-stricken, to save you. You've nothing—absolutely nothing to hope for from the Gano side." His voice was strong. It rang like a challenge. "My mother is wrong! Our fathers have eaten sour grapes."
Ethan leaned forward about to speak, but his uncle broke in harshly:
"I tell you you belong to a worn-out race. We are among those who are too remote from the soil—'there is no health in us.'"
"Oh come, Uncle John, don't talk as if we were Aztecs, or an effete monarchy."
"We are effete, and we deserve to die out root and branch."
The little movement over in the dark corner passed unnoticed in Ethan's attempt at protest.