“Yes, she means it,” replied Lady Fletcher, lowering her voice discreetly, till it was little more than a whisper.  “She has always had just such notions.  It gives Amy a great deal of trouble and worry to keep her straight.  You know—­or perhaps you didn’t know, for we don’t talk of these things often, especially when they are in one’s family—­but there is a bad strain in her blood and they are always looking for it to crop out somewhere.  Her mother married happily—­and escaped the curse—­but for several generations back the women of her family have been of peculiar temperament and—­they’ve usually gone wrong sometime in their lives.  It seems to be in the blood.  They can’t help it.  Mr. Ledoux told Amy all about it at the time of their marriage, and that is the reason they have tried to keep Opal as secluded as possible from the usual free-and-easy associations of American girls, and are so anxious to marry her off wisely.”

“And speedily,” put in Alice—­“the sooner the better!”

“Yes, yes—­speedily!”

Lady Fletcher gave an uneasy glance in Opal’s direction before she continued.

“You are too young to have heard the story, Alice, but her grandmother—­a black-eyed Spanish lady of high rank—­was made quite unpleasantly notorious by her associations with a brother of Lady Henrietta Verdayne.  He was an unprincipled roue—­this Lord Hubert Aldringham—­a libertine who openly boasted of the conquests he had made abroad.  Being appointed to many foreign posts in the diplomatic service, he was naturally on intimate terms with people of rank and royalty.  They say he was very fascinating, with the devil’s own eye, and ten times as devilish a heart—­”

“Why, Mamma!”

Alice was shocked.

“I am only repeating what they said, child,” apologized the elder woman meekly.  “Women will be fools, you know, over a handsome face and a tender voice—­some women, I mean—­and that’s what Opal has to fight against.”

“Poor Opal,” murmured Alice, “I did not know!”

“Some even go so far as to say—­”

Again Lady Fletcher looked up apprehensively, but Opal was still absorbed in her dreams.

“To say—­what, Mother?”

“Well, of course it’s only talk—­nobody can actually know, I suppose, and I wouldn’t, of course, be quoted as saying anything for the world, dear knows; but they say that it is more than probable that Opal’s mother was ... Lord Hubert’s own daughter!"

“Oh, Mother!  If it is true—­if it could be true—­what a fight for her!”

“Yes, and the worst of it is with Opal, she won’t fight.  She has been rigidly trained in the principles of virtue and propriety from her very birth, and yet she horrifies every one at times by shocking ideas—­that no one knows where she gets, nor, worse yet, where they may lead!”