"There are many different kinds of merit, Mr. Starr," she returned, with a wistful dignity. "I do not undervalue that of character, but I do not think that even a good character can atone for the absence of family inheritance—of the qualities which come from refined birth and breeding. We have had the misfortune in our family of one experience of an ill-assorted and tragic marriage," she added.
"We must never forget poor Sarah's misery and ours, Sister Matoaca," remarked Miss Mitty, from the opposite side of the hearth; "and yet Harry Mickleborough's father was a most respectable man, and the teacher of Greek in a college."
All the pity went out of me, and I felt only a blind sense of irritation at the artificial values, the feminine lack of grasp, the ignorance of the true proportions of life. I grew suddenly hard, and something of this hardness passed into my voice when I spoke.
"I stand or fall by own worth and by that alone," I returned, "and your niece, if she marries me, will stand or fall as I do. I ask no favours, no allowances, even from her."
Withdrawing her hand from mine, Sally took a single step forward, and stood with her eyes on the faces that showed so starved and wan in the firelight.
"Don't you see—oh, can't you see," she asked, "that it is because of these very things that I love him? How can I separate his past from what he is to-day? How can I say that I would have this or that different—his birth, his childhood, his struggle—when all these have helped to make him the man I love? Who else have I ever known that could compare with him for a minute? You wanted me to marry George Bolingbroke, but what has he ever done to prove what he was worth?"
"Sally, Sally," said Miss Mitty, sternly, "he had no need to prove it. It was proved centuries before his birth. The Bolingbrokes proved themselves to their king before this was a country—"
"Well, I'm not his king," rejoined Sally, scornfully, "so it wasn't proved to me. I ask something more."
"More, Sally?"
"Yes, more, Aunt Mitty, a thousand times and ten thousand times. What do I care for a dead arm that fought for a dead king? Both are dust to-day, and I am alive. No, no, give me, not honour and loyalty that have been dead five hundred years, but truth and courage that I can turn to to-day,—not chivalric phrases that are mere empty sound, but honesty and a strong arm that I can lean on."