But he did leave much sooner than he had
intended, and with only a small part of what he had planned to say
said. He withdrew to think it over; and in the long walk from the
Severences to his lodgings in the Wyandotte he did think it over
with his usual exhaustive thoroughness.
He had been entirely sincere in his talk with Margaret. He was a
shrewd judge both of human nature and of situations, and he saw
that a marriage between Margaret and Grant would be in every way
admirable. He appreciated the fine qualities of both, and realized
that they would have an uncommonly good chance of hitting it off
tranquilly together. Of all their qualities of mutual adaptability
the one that impressed him most deeply was the one at which he was
always scoffing--what he called their breeding. Theoretically,
and so far as his personal practice went, he genuinely despised
"breeding"; but he could not uproot a most worshipful reverence
for it, a reverence of which he was ashamed. He had no "breeding"
himself; he was experiencing in Washington a phase of life which
was entirely new to him, and it had developed in him the snobbish
instincts that are the rankest weeds in the garden of
civilization.
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