"Seven years is a long time," she said, looking at Thorne. "Are you sure
you have forgotten nothing? You saw what the man was?" she demanded. "He
was precisely what he looked to be--one of the men about the stables. I was
not supposed to know one from another.

"It is a mistake to talk of a girl having fallen. She has crawled down in
her thoughts, a step at a time--unless she fell in the dark; and I declare
that before this happened it was almost dark with me!

"My mother is a very clever woman; she has had the means to carry out her
theories, and I am her only child (Norwood Benedet is my half-brother). I
was not allowed to play with ordinary children; they might have spoiled my
accent or told me stories that would have made me afraid of the dark; and
while the perfect child was waited for, I had only my nurses. I was not
allowed to go to school, of course. Schools are for ordinary children. When
I was past the governess age I had tutors, exceptional beings, imported
like my frocks. They were too clever for the work of teaching one ignorant,
spoiled child. They wore me out with their dissertations, their excess of
personality, their overflow of acquirements, all bearing upon poor, stupid
me, who could absorb so little. And mama would not allow me to be pushed,
so I never actually worked or played. These persons were in the house,
holidays and all, and there was a perpetual little dribble of instruction
going on. Oh, how I wearied of the deadly deliberation of it all!

"As a family we have always been in a way notorious; I am aware of that:
but my mother's ideals are far different from those that held in father's
young days, when he made his money and a highly ineligible circle of
acquaintances. Nordy inherited all the fun and the friends, and he spent
the money like a prince. Once or twice a year he would come down to the