"At least I have fighting blood in my veins, and I will never give up.

After all, even if my life has been mean, I haven't been--and that is what really counts in the end.
If I haven't been happy, I have tried to be gallant--and it takes courage to be gallant with an aching heart--" As she fastened the long string of pearls--one of Kent Page's early gifts--she drew back from the mirror, with the light of philosophy, if not of happiness, overflowing her eyes.

With her grace and her radiance she stood for the flower of the Virginian aristocratic tradition; with her sincerity and her fearlessness she embodied the American democratic ideal.

Her forefathers had brought representative government to the New World.

They had sat in the first General Assembly ever summoned in America; and through the generations they had fought always on the side of liberty tempered by discipline, of democracy exalted by patriotism.
They had stood from the beginning for dignity, for manners, for the essence of social culture which places art at the service of life.
Always they had sought to preserve the finer lessons of the past; always they had struggled against the tyranny of mediocrity, the increasing cult of the second best.