But as he continued she answered at length, hesitating, using phrases as trite and quaintly stilted as the theme itself, gently defending the old names he sneered at.

And in her words he savoured a certain old-time flavour of primness and pride--a vaguely delicate hint of resentment, which it amused him to excite.

Pacing the dunes with her waist enlaced, he said, to incite retort: "The old families are done for.

Decadent in morals, in physique, mean mentally and spiritually, they are even worse off than respectfully cherished ruins, because they are out of fashion; they and their dingy dwellings.

Our house is on the market; I'd be glad to see it sold only Tressilvain will get half." "In you," she said, "there seems to be other things, besides reverence, which are out of fashion." He continued, smilingly: "As the old mansions disappear, Virginia, so disintegrate those families whose ancestors gave names to the old lanes of New Amsterdam.