dress. The
ladies of this party were favourably affected at sight of the pedestrian
upon the sidewalk, and, as the machine was moving slowly, and close to
the curb, they had time to observe him in detail, which they did with a
frankness not pleasing to the object of their attentions. "One sees so
many nice-looking people one doesn't know nowadays," said the youngest
of the young ladies. "This old town of ours is really getting enormous.
I shouldn't mind knowing who he is."

"I don't know," the youth beside her said, loudly enough to be heard at
a considerable distance. "I don't know who he is, but from his looks I
know who he thinks he is: he thinks he's the Grand Duke Cuthbert!" There
was a burst of tittering as the car gathered speed and rolled away, with
the girl continuing to look back until her scandalized companions forced
her to turn by pulling her hood over her face. She made an impression
upon George, so deep a one, in fact, that he unconsciously put his
emotion into a muttered word:

Riffraff!

This was the last "walk home" he was ever to take by the route he was
now following: up National Avenue to Amberson Addition and the two big
old houses at the foot of Amberson Boulevard; for tonight would be the
last night that he and Fanny were to spend in the house which the Major
had forgotten to deed to Isabel. To-morrow they were to "move out," and
George was to begin his work in Bronson's office. He had not come to
this collapse without a fierce struggle--but the struggle was inward,
and the rolling world was not agitated by it, and rolled calmly on.
For of all the "ideals of life" which the world, in its rolling,
inconsiderately flattens out to nothingness, the least likely to retain
a profile is that ideal which depends upon inheriting money. George
Amberson, in spite of his record of failures in business, had spoken
shrewdly when he realized at last that money, like life, was "like
quicksilver in a nest of cracks." And his nephew had the awakening
experience of seeing the great Amberson Estate vanishing into such
a nest--in a twinkling, it seemed, now that it was indeed so utterly
vanished.

His uncle had suggested that he might write to college friends; perhaps
they could help him to something better than the prospect offered
by Bronson's office; but George flushed and shook his head, without
explaining. In that small and quietly superior "crowd" of his he had too
emphatically supported the ideal of being