The others sat rooted to their chairs—partly at the sight of Doris’s frenzy, partly of her humiliation, partly to hear the multitudinous lovers she had always hinted at reduced in a moment of devastating candour to one only. Gervase had sprung to his feet. He trembled and had turned very white. Then for a moment he, too, seemed to turn to stone.
“I pray you,” repeated Doris hoarsely—“I pray you on my knees....”
Her brother recovered himself and, taking both her hands, pulled her to her feet.
“Don’t, Doris....”
“Then, will you?”
“My dear, is the family worth saving?”
“What d’you mean?”
“Listen, Doris. You’ve just told me that you’ve given up your life’s love and happiness to the family. Peter ... I know ... gave up his. Mary gave up part of hers, but saved a little. Jenny alone has refused to give up anything, and is happy. Is our family worth such sacrifices?”
Her head drooped unexpectedly to his shoulder, and she collapsed in weeping.
“No,” he continued—“it isn’t worth it. The family’s taken enough. For five hundred years it has sat on the land, and at first it did good—it cared for the poor, it worked its farms to the best advantage, and the estate prospered. But it’s outlived those days—it’s only an encumbrance now, it’s holding back the land from proper development, it’s keeping the yeoman and small land-owner out of their rights, it can’t afford to care for the poor. It can barely keep its hold on the land by dint of raising mortgages and marrying for money. It can only be kept up by continual sacrifices—of the land, of the tenants, of its own children. It’s like a wicked old dying god, that can only be kept alive by sacrifices—human sacrifices. And I tell you, it shan’t be any more.”