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