the sister's one of the dreadful people. I've no doubt that
with a little time you could rake up dozens of them: have
her 'traced', as they call it in detective stories. I don't
think you'd frighten Owen, but you might: it's natural
enough he should have been corrupted by those foreign ideas.
You might even manage to part him from the girl; but you
couldn't keep him from being in love with her. I saw that
when I looked them over last evening. I said to myself:
'It's a real old-fashioned American case, as sweet and sound
as home-made bread.' Well, if you take his loaf away from
him, what are you going to feed him with instead? Which of
your nasty Paris poisons do you think he'll turn to?
Supposing you succeed in keeping him out of a really bad
mess--and, knowing the young man as I do, I rather think
that, at this crisis, the only way to do it would be to
marry him slap off to somebody else--well, then, who, may I
ask, would you pick out? One of your sweet French
ingenues, I suppose? With as much mind as a minnow and as
much snap as a soft-boiled egg. You might hustle him into
that kind of marriage; I daresay you could--but if I know
Owen, the natural thing would happen before the first baby
was weaned."

"I don't know why you insinuate such odious things against
Owen!"

"Do you think it would be odious of him to return to his
real love when he'd been forcibly parted from her? At any
rate, it's what your French friends do, every one of them!
Only they don't generally have the grace to go back to an