"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!"

"But she is good, Mother. She has the noblest ideas of charity and
kindness and altruism, of the advancement of all that's good and true in
the world, of the attainment of knowledge, of the beauties and