“These are very noble words, Constance;” indeed, Leonard spoke them with much solemnity. “The verbal interpretation of the Prophets no longer occupies our minds. Still, they are very noble words. I have never believed myself to be superstitious or to believe in heredity of misfortune; still, after learning for the first time the long string of disasters that have fallen upon my people, I became possessed with a kind of terror, as if the Hand of Fate was pressing upon us all.”
“They are very noble words,” Constance repeated. “It seems as if the speaker was thinking of a distinction between consequences—certain consequences—of every man’s life as regards his children and——”
“What consequences—from father to son?”
“Why, you have only to look around you. We live in conditions made for us by our forefathers. My people behaved well and prospered: they saved money and bought lands: they lived, in the old phrase, God-fearing lives. Therefore I am sound in mind and body, and I am tolerably wealthy.”
“Oh! that, of course. But I was not thinking of consequences like these.”
“You must think of them. A man loses his fortune and position. Down go children and grandchildren. The edifice of generations may have to be built up again from the very foundations. Is it nothing to inherit a name which has been smirched? If a man commits a bad action, are not his children disgraced with him?”
“Of course; but only by that act. They are not persecuted by the hand of Fate.”
“Who can trace the consequences of a single act? Who can follow it up in all the lines of consequence?”
“Yes; but the third and fourth generation....”
“Who can say when those consequences will cease?”