Its founder had been a coarse, uneducated man, but his success in the
liquor trade had been too great to be forgotten, even years after he
had abandoned it and built up the great commercial house that bore his
name. His ambition for his son had been boundless. He had spared
nothing to make him a better man in the world's eye than his father.
He had succeeded. But the world had persisted in remembering the
parental bar. Robert Weston had never seen that bar, for he had
entered on the scene when there was a chain of them, and his father had
brought him up almost in ignorance of their very existence. Even at
the university he had little reason to be ashamed of them. It was
after he had spent years in rounding out his education abroad, and had
returned to take his place in those circles which he believed he was
entitled to enter, that he found that the world persisted in pointing
to the large revenue stamp that seemed to cling to him. A stronger man
would have fought against odds like those and won for himself a place
that would suffer no denial.
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