BOOK III

Volume 5. 
I. ASCENDI
II.  The path of philanthropy
III.  Vineland
IV.  The Viking
V. The survival of the fittest

Volume 6. 
VI.  Clio, or Thalia? 
VII “Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
VIII.  In which the law betrays A heart
IX.  Wylie street
X. The Price of Freedom

Volume 7. 
XI.  In which it is all done over again
XII.  The entrance into Eden
XIII.  Of the world beyond the gates. 
XIV.  Containing philosophy from Mr. Grainger
XV.  The pillars of society

Volume 8. 
XVI.  In which A mirror is held up
XVII.  The renewal of an ancient hospitality
XVIII.  In which Mr. Erwin sees Paris

A MODERN CHRONICLE

CHAPTER I

WHAT’S IN HEREDITY

Honora Leffingwell is the original name of our heroine.  She was born in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, at Nice, in France, and she spent the early years of her life in St. Louis, a somewhat conservative old city on the banks of the Mississippi River.  Her father was Randolph Leffingwell, and he died in the early flower of his manhood, while filling with a grace that many remember the post of United States Consul at Nice.  As a linguist he was a phenomenon, and his photograph in the tortoise-shell frame proves indubitably, to anyone acquainted with the fashions of 1870, that he was a master of that subtlest of all arts, dress.  He had gentle blood in his veins, which came from Virginia through Kentucky in a coach and six, and he was the equal in appearance and manners of any duke who lingered beside classic seas.

Honora has often pictured to herself a gay villa set high above the curving shore, the amethyst depths shading into emerald, laced with milk-white foam, the vivid colours of the town, the gay costumes; the excursions, the dinner-parties presided over by the immaculate young consul in three languages, and the guests chosen from the haute noblesse of Europe.  Such was the vision in her youthful mind, added to by degrees as she grew into young-ladyhood and surreptitiously became familiar with the writings of Ouida and the Duchess, and other literature of an educating cosmopolitan nature.