"Yes, control, guide, steady her through the most critical period of her life?"
The young fellow, plainly unconvinced, looked at Miss Quest out of troubled eyes.
"Come," she said briskly, "let's have a heart-to-heart talk and find out what's ahead of us. Let's be business-like and candid. Shall we?"
"By all means."
"Then we'll begin at the very beginning:
"Stephanie is a dear. But she's very young. And at twenty she will still be very, very young. What traits and talents she may have inherited from a clever, unprincipled father—my own nephew, Mr. Cleland—I don't know. God willing, there's nothing of him in her—no tendencies toward irregularities; no unmoral inclination to drift, nothing spineless and irresponsible.
"As for Stephanie's mother, I know little about her. I think she was merely a healthy young animal without education, submitting to and following instinctively the first man who attracted her. Which happened to be my unhappy nephew."
She shook her head and gazed musingly at the window where the sunshine fell.
"There are the propositions; this is the problem, Mr. Cleland. Now, let us look at the conditions which bear directly on it. Am I boring you?"
"No," he said. "It's very necessary to consider this matter. I'm just beginning to realize that I'm really not fitted to guide and control Stephanie."