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vey it to the stranger, and ask whether that was what he sought. And now here was that same doubt and question coming up again, and he found himself quite as little able to solve it as he had been twenty years ago. Indeed, with the views that had come up since, it behooved him to be cautious, until he knew both the man and the circumstances.

"You are probably aware," continued Mountford,—"for I understand you have been some time in this neighborhood,—that there is a pretended claim, a contesting claim, to the present possession of the estate of Braithwaite, and a long dormant title. Possibly—who knows?—you yourself might have a claim to one or the other. Would not that be a singular coincidence? Have you ever had the curiosity to investigate your parentage with a view to this point?"

"The title," replied Redclyffe, "ought not to be a very strong consideration with an American. One of us would be ashamed, I verily believe, to assume any distinction, except such as may be supposed to indicate personal, not hereditary merit. We have in some measure, I think, lost the feeling of the past, and even of the future, as regards our own lines of descent; and even as to wealth, it seems to me that the idea of heaping up a pile of gold, or accumulating a broad estate for our children and remoter descendants, is dying out. We wish to enjoy the fulness of our success in life ourselves, and leave to those who descend from us the task of providing for themselves. This tendency is seen in our lavish expenditure, and the whole arrangement of our lives; and it is slowly—yet not very slowly, either—effecting a change in the whole economy of American life."