hree millions at thirty-three--and millions beget millions!"

... Power--millions meant power; millions made ready the stage for the
display and use of every gift, gave the opportunity for the full
occupation of all personal qualities, made a setting for the jewel of
life and beauty, which reflected, intensified every ray of merit.
Power--that was it. Her own grandfather had had power. He had made his
fortune, a great one too, by patents which exploited the vanity of
mankind, and, as though to prove his cynical contempt for his
fellow-creatures, had then invented a quick-firing gun which nearly
every nation in the world adopted. First, he had got power by a fortune
which represented the shallowness and gullibility of human nature, then
had exploited the serious gift which had always been his, the native
genius which had devised the gun when he was yet a boy. He had died at
last with the smile on his lips which had followed his remark, quoted
in every great newspaper of two continents, that: "The world wants to
be fooled, so I fooled it; it wants to be stunned, so I stunned it. My
fooling will last as long as my gun; and both have paid me well. But
they all love being fooled best."

Old Draygon Grenfel's fortune had been divided among his three sons and
herself, for she had been her grandfather's favourite, and she was the
only grandchild to whom he had left more than a small reminder of his
existence. As a child her intelligence was so keen, her perception so
acute, she realized him so well, that he had said she was the only one
of his blood who had anything of himself in character or personality,
and he predicted--too often in her presence--that she "would give the
world a start or two when she had the chance." His intellectual
contempt for his eldest son, her father, was reproduced in her with no
prompting on his part; and, without her own mother from the age of
three, Jasmine had grown up self-willed and imperious, yet with too
much intelligence to carry her will and power too far. Infinite
adaptability had been the result of a desire to please and charm;
behind which lay an unlimited determination to get her own way and bend
other wills to hers.

The two wills she had not yet bent as she pleased were those of her
stepmother and of Ian Stafford--one, because she was jealous and
obstinate, and the other because he had an adequate self-respect and an
ambition of his own to have his way in a world which would not give