Project Gutenberg's The Inheritors, by Joseph Conrad
and Ford M. Hueffer

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Title: The Inheritors

Author: Joseph Conrad
Ford M. Hueffer

Release Date: February 3, 2005 [EBook #14888]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE INHERITORS

_An Extravagant Story_

By

JOSEPH CONRAD & FORD M. HUEFFER

_"Sardanapalus builded seven cities in a day.
Let us eat, drink and sleep, for to-morrow we die."_

MCCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

_New York_

MCMI

_London,
William Heinemann._
_1901, by_
MCCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

_The Trow Printing Company
New York_

To BORYS & CHRISTINA

THE INHERITORS

CHAPTER ONE

"Ideas," she said. "Oh, as for ideas--"

"Well?" I hazarded, "as for ideas--?"

We went through the old gateway and I cast a glance over my shoulder.
The noon sun was shining over the masonry, over the little saints'
effigies, over the little fretted canopies, the grime and the white
streaks of bird-dropping.

"There," I said, pointing toward it, "doesn't that suggest something to
you?"

She made a motion with her head--half negative, half contemptuous.

"But," I stuttered, "the associations--the ideas--the historical
ideas--"

She said nothing.

"You Americans," I began, but her smile stopped me. It was as if she
were amused at the utterances of an old lady shocked by the habits of
the daughters of the day. It was the smile of a person who is confident
of superseding one fatally.

In conversations of any length one of the parties assumes the
superiority--superiority of rank, intellectual or social. In this
conversation she, if she did not attain to tacitly acknowledged
temperamental superiority, seemed at least to claim it, to have no doubt
as to its ultimate according. I was unused to this. I was a talker,
proud of my conversational powers.

I had looked at her before; now I cast a sideways, critical glance at
her. I came out of my moodiness to wonder what type this was. She had
good hair, good eyes, and some c