. . .  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 save at the point of the sword.  Come of as good family as there was in England, and the grandson of a duke, he still was eager for power, determined to get on, ingenious in searching for that opportunity which even the most distinguished talent must have, if it is to soar high above the capable average.  That chance, the predestined alluring opening had not yet come; but his eyes were wide open, and he was ready for the spring—­nerved the more to do so by the thought that Jasmine would appreciate his success above all others, even from the standpoint of intellectual appreciation, all emotions excluded.  How did it come that Jasmine was so worldly wise, and yet so marvellously the insouciant child?