In fact one felt intuitively sorry--almost afraid--for her lest
her daring, adventurous spirit should lead her too close to the
precipice along the rocky pathway of life.

She was thinking many strange thoughts as she sat looking out of the
window. Her English cousins, related to her only through her stepmother,
yet called kin for courtesy's sake, had given up trying to understand
her complexities, as she had likewise given up trying to explain
herself. If they were pleased forever to consider her in the light of a
conundrum, she thought, why--let them!

After a while the ladies at the tea-table began to chat in more
confidential tones. Opal was not too oblivious to her surroundings to
notice, nor to grasp the fact that they were discussing her, but that
knowledge did not interest her. She was so used to being considered a
curiosity that it had ceased to have any special concern for her. She
only hoped that they would sometime succeed in understanding her better
than she had yet learned to understand herself. It might have interested
her, however, had she overheard this particular conversation, for it
shed a great light upon certain shades of character she had discovered
in herself and often wondered about, but had never had explained to her.

But she did not hear.

"I am greatly concerned about Opal," Lady Alice was saying. "She is the
most difficult creature, Mamma--you've no idea how peculiar--with the
most dangerous, positively _immoral_ ideas. I do wish she were safely
married, for then--well, there is really no knowing what might happen to
a girl who thinks and talks as she does. I used to think it might be a
sort of American pose--put on for startling effect, you know--but I
begin to think she actually means it!"

"Yes, she means it," replied Lady Fletcher, lowering her voice
discreetly, till it was little more than a whisper. "She has always had
just such notions. It gives Amy a great deal of trouble and worry to
keep her straight. You know--or perhaps you didn't know, for we don't
talk of these things often, especially when they are in one's
family--but there is a bad strain in her blood and they are always
looking for it to crop out somewhere. Her mother married happily--and
escaped the curse--but for several generations back the women of her
family have been of peculiar temperament and--they've usually gone wrong
sometime in their lives. It seems to be in the blood. They can't help
it. Mr. Ledoux told A