true that all of our remote ancestors came over with William the
Conqueror--I have sometimes thought that the number of steerage
passengers his ships would accommodate must have been little short of
marvellous--but it is equally true that the grandfathers of most of
our leisure class were either deserving or dishonest persons--who
either started life on a farm, and studied Euclid by the firelight and
did all the other priggish things they thought would look well in a
biography, or else met with marked success in embezzlement. So money,
after all, is our only standard; and when a woman is as rich as you
were yesterday she cannot hope for friends any more than the Queen