I can conceive of men being swayed by it.

Had you been born a gentleman, you would not so easily have acquired these false views that you express." M.de Vilmorin stared blankly, uncomprehending.
"Had I been born a gentleman, do you say ?" quoth he, in a slow, bewildered voice.

"But I was born a gentleman.

My race is as old, my blood as good as yours, monsieur." From M.le Marquis there was a slight play of eyebrows, a vague, indulgent smile.

His dark, liquid eyes looked squarely into the face of M.de Vilmorin.
"You have been deceived in that, I fear." "Deceived ?" "Your sentiments betray the indiscretion of which madame your mother must have been guilty." The brutally affronting words were sped beyond recall, and the lips that had uttered them, coldly, as if they had been the merest commonplace, remained calm and faintly sneering.
A dead silence followed.