it--really," said Sylvia quietly; "I like him immensely."

"Dearest, you mean it generously--with your usual exaggeration. You have
heard that he has been foolish, and because he's so young, so likable,
every instinct, every impulse in you is aroused to--to be nice to him--"

"And if that were--"

"There is no harm, dear--" Mrs. Ferrall hesitated, her grey eyes
softening to a graver revery. Then looking up: "It's rather pathetic,"
she said in a low voice. "Kemp thinks he's foredoomed--like all the
Siwards. It's an hereditary failing with him,--no, it's hereditary
damnation. Siward after Siward, generation after generation you know--"
She bit her lip, thinking a moment. "His grandfather was a friend of
my grand-parents, brilliant, handsome, generous, and--doomed! His own
father was found dying in a dreadful resort in London where he had
wandered when stupefied--a Siward! Think of it! So you see what that
outbreak of Stephen's means to those whose families have been New
Yorkers since New York was. It is ominous, it is more than ominous--it
means that the master-vice has seized on one more Siward. But I shall
never, never admit it to his mother."

The younger girl sat wide-eyed, silent; the elder's gaze was upon her,
but her thoughts, remote, centred on the hapless mother of such a son.

"Such indulgence was once fashionable; moderation is the present
fashion. Perhaps he will fall into line," said Mrs. Ferrall
thoughtfully. "The main thing is to keep him among people, not to
drop him. The gregarious may be shamed, but if anything, any incident,
happens to drive him outside by himself, if he should become solitary,
there's not a chance in the world for him. ... It's a pity. I know he
meant to make himself the exception to the rule--and look! Already one
carouse of his has landed him in the daily papers!"

Sylvia flushed and looked up: "Grace, may I ask you a plain question?"

"Yes, child," she answered absently.

"Has it occurred to you that what you have said about this boy touches
me very closely?"

Mrs. Ferrall's wits returned nimbly from woolgathering, and she shot a
startled, inquiring glance at the girl beside her.

"You--you mean the matter of heredity, Sylvia?"

"Yes. I think my uncle Major Belwether chose you as his august
mouthpiece for that little sermon on the dangers of heredity--the danger
of being ignorant concerning what women of my race had done--before I
came into the world they found so amusi