One evening when he was more than commonly
out of sorts, after sitting some time in moody silence, he roused
himself, and, taking up a book that lay on her table, he glanced at
its title and turned over the leaves. It happened by ill luck to be a
volume of Darwin that Mrs. Lee had just borrowed from the
library of Congress.
"Do you understand this sort of thing?" asked the Senator abruptly,
in a tone that suggested a sneer.
"Not very well," replied Mrs. Lee, rather curtly.
"Why do you want to understand it?" persisted the Senator. "What
good will it do you?"
"Perhaps it will teach us to be modest," answered Madeleine, quite
equal to the occasion.
"Because it says we descend from monkeys?" rejoined the Senator,
roughly.
"Do you think you are descended from monkeys?"
"Why not?" said Madeleine.
"Why not?" repeated Ratcliffe, laughing harshly. "I don't like the
connection. Do you mean to introduce your distant relations into
society?"
"They would bring more amusement into it than most of its present
members,"
rejoined Mrs. Lee, with a gentle smile that threatened mischief.
But Ratcliffe would not be warned; on the contrary, the only effect
of Mrs.
Lee's defiance was to exasperate his ill-temper, and whenever he
lost his temper he became senatorial and Websterian. "Such
books," he began, "disgrace our civilization; they degrade and
stultify our divine nature; they are only suited for Asiatic
despotisms where men are reduced to the level of brutes; that they
should be accepted by a man like Baron Jacobi, I can understand;
he and his masters have nothing to do in the world but to trample
on human rights.
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