With his ancient name, he could of course have gone into society and paid violent court to some daughter of the new rich and have settled down to a life of comfortable boredom on the marriage dowry. But he couldn’t see such an adventure seriously. He realized with a sense of half-bitter amusement that that marriage would finally damn him in the eyes of his own class. For while the man who slept with his kitchen maid only aroused sly gossip, the man who married her made himself personally unacceptable in their
