e 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
own. Look at Stephen! How dared his parents bring him into the world?
Look at Sylvia! And now, suppose they marry!"

"Dearest," said Ferrall, "my head is a whirl and my wits are spinning
like five toy tops. Your theories are all right; but unless you and I
are prepared to abandon several business enterprises and take to the
lecture platform, I'm afraid people are going to be wicked enough to
marry whom they like, and the human race will he run as usual with money
the favourite, and love a case of 'also-ran.' ... By the way, how dared
you marry me, knowing the sort of demon I am?"

The gathering frown on Mrs. Ferrall's brow faded; she raised her clear
grey eyes and met her husband's gaze, gay, humourous, and with a hint of
tenderness--enough to bring the colour into her pretty face.

"You know I'm right, Kemp."

"Always, dear. And now that we have the world off our hands for a few
minutes, suppose we gallop?"

But she held her horse to a walk, riding forward, grave, thoughtful,
preoccupied with a new problem, only part of which she had told her
husband.

For that night she had been awakened in her bed to find standing beside
her a white, wide-eyed figure, shivering, limbs a-chill beneath her
clinging lace. She had taken the pallid visitor to her arms and warmed
her and soothed her and whispered to her, murmuring the thousand little
words and sounds, the breathing magic m