"Jasmine takes a lot of getting over," answered Jasmine's father. "She has got the brains of all the family, the beauty her family never had—the genius of my father, and the wilfulness, and—"
He paused, for, after all, he was not talking to the mother of his child.
"Yes, all of it, dear child," was the enigmatical reply.
"I wish—Nelly, I do wish that—"
"Yes, I know what you wish, Cuthbert, but it's no good. I'm not of any use to her. She will work out her own destiny alone—as her grandfather did."
"God knows I hope not! A man can carry it off, but a woman—"
Slow and almost stupid as he was, he knew that her inheritance from her grandfather's nature was a perilous gift.