I know him too well; and with as much cordiality as I could put into an
evil service. She will drag him down, down, Tresten!'

'They are not joined yet,' said the colonel.

'She has him by the worst half of him. Her correspondence with me--her
letter to excuse her insolence, which she does like a prim chit--throws a
light on the girl she is. She will set him aiming at power to trick her
out in the decorations. She will not keep him to his labours to
consolidate the power. She will pervert the aesthetic in him, through
her hold on his material nature, his vanity, his luxuriousness. She is
one of the young women who begin timidly, and when they see that they
enjoy comparative impunity, grow intrepid in dissipation, and that
palling, they are ravenously ambitious. She will drive him at his mark
before the time is ripe--ruin-him. He is a Titan, not a god, though god-
like he seems in comparison with men. He would be fleshly enough in any
hands. This girl will drain him of all his nobler fire.'

'She shows mighty little of the inclination,' said the colonel.

'To you. But when they come together? I know his voice!'

The colonel protested his doubts of their coming together.

'Ultimately?' the baroness asked, and brooded. 'But she will have to see
him; and then will she resist him? I shall change one view of her if she
does.'

'She will shirk the interview,' Tresten remarked. 'Supposing they meet:
I don't think much will come of it, unless they meet on a field, and he