nybody will ever make
decency a fashion?"

"You're doing your best," said Ferrall, laughing at his wife's pretty,
boyish face turned back toward him over her shoulder; "you're presenting
your cousin and his millions to a girl who can dress the part--"

"Don't, Kemp! I don't know why I meddled! ... I wish I hadn't--"

"I do. You can't let Howard alone! You're perfectly possessed to plague
him when he's with you, and now you've arranged for another woman to
keep it up for the rest of his lifetime. What does Sylvia want with
a man who possesses the instincts and intellect of a coachman? She is
asked everywhere, she has her own money. Why not let her alone? Or is it
too late?"

"You mean let her make a fool of herself with Stephen Siward? That is
where she is drifting."

"Do you think--"

"Yes, I do. She has a perfect genius for selecting the wrong man; and
she's already sorry for this one. I'm sorry for Stephen, too; but it's
safe for me to be."

"She might make something of him."

"You know perfectly well no woman ever did make anything of a doomed
man. He'd kill her--I mean it, Kemp! He would literally kill her with
grief. She isn't like Leila Mortimer; she isn't like most girls of her
sort. You men think her a rather stunning, highly tempered, unreasonable
young girl, with a reserve of sufficiently trained intelligence to marry
the best our market offers--and close her eyes;--a thoroughbred with the
caprices of one, but also with the grafted instinct for proper mating."

"Well, that's all right, isn't it?" asked Ferrall. "That's the way I
size her up. Isn't it correct?"

"Yes, in a way. She has all the expensive training of the
thoroughbred--and all the ignorance, too. She is cold-blooded because
wholesome; a trifle sceptical because so absolutely unawakened. She
never experienced a deep emotion. Impulses have intoxicated her once or
twice--as when she asked my opinion about running off with Cavendish,
and that boy and girl escapade with Rivington; nothing at all except
high mettle, the innocent daring lurking in all thoroughbreds, and a
great deal of very red blood racing through that superb young body.
But," Ferrall reined in to listen, "but if ever a man awakens her--I
don't care who he is--you'll see a girl you never knew, a brand-new
creature emerge with the last rags and laces of conventionality dropping
from her; a woman, Kemp, heiress to every generous impulse, every
emotion, every vice, every virtu