The long, beautifully modelled hands, clasped over the battered steel sword-hilt, were like Charles's too.

Ruth read the inscription on the low marble pedestal, relating how he had fallen in the taking of the Redan, and then looked again.

And gradually a great feeling of pity rose in her heart for the family which had lived here for so many generations, and which seemed now so likely to die out.

Providence does not seem to care much for old families, or to value long descent.

Rather it seems to favor the new race--the Browns, and the Joneses, and the Robinsons, who yesterday were not, and who to-day elbow the old county families from the place which has known them from time immemorial.
"I suppose Molly will some day marry a Smith," said Ruth to herself, "and then it will be all over.