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 virtue of all that brilliant race of hers."

"You seem to know," he said, amused and curious.

"I know. Major Belwether told me that he had thought of Howard as an
anchor for her. It seemed a pity--Howard with all his cold, heavy
negative inertia. . I said I'd do it. I did. And now I don't know; I
wish, almost wish I hadn't."

"What has changed your ideas?"

"I don't know. Howard is safer than Stephen Siward, already in the first
clutches of his master-vice. Would you mate what she inherits from her
mother and her mother's mother, with what is that poor boy's heritage
from the Siwards?"

"After all," observed Ferrall dryly, "we're not in the angel-breeding
business."

"We ought to be. Every decent person ought to be. If they were,
inherited vice would be as rare in this country as smallpox!"

"People don't inherit smallpox, dear."

"Never mind! You know what I mean. In our stock farms and kennels, we
weed out, destroy, exterminate hereditary weakness in everything. We pay
the greatest attention to the production of all offspring except our