"Oh, very important, indeed. For now you have still time to decide what kind of a woman you're going to make of Val Gano."
"Oh, have I?"
He nodded.
"You can make up your mind you won't be a dull, ignorant person, all your life bound in shallows and in miseries."
"No, indeed," she said, with vigor.
"It's in your power now to take the necessary steps towards some better fate. By-and-by it will be too late: you'll be like the crooked catalpa in the terrace, grown awry and too old to straighten out."
"No, I shall be like the tulipifera rhododendron."
He laughed.
"You are ambitious, my dear"; and then he sighed. "Few come up to tulipifera. Now, I am far enough from being a rich man, and I can't give my daughters a fortune; but I can give them something far more valuable."
"Now?"