"He probably will. But there's always the chance that he may not. He may be more ambitious."
Dr. McKenzie ran his fingers through his crinkled hair. "She's good enough for—a king."
"You think that, naturally, but he isn't the doting father of an only daughter."
"If he thinks that my daughter isn't good enough for his son—"
"You needn't shout at me like that," calmly; "but he knows as well as you do that Derry Drake's millions could get him any girl."
He had a flashing sense of the coarse fiber of Hilda's mental make-up. "My Jean is a well-born and well-bred woman," he said, slowly. "It is a thing that money can't buy."
"Money buys a very good counterfeit. Lots of the women who come here aren't ladies, not in the sense that you mean it, but on the surface you can't tell them apart."
He knew that it was true. No one knows better than a doctor what is beneath the veneer of social convention and personal hypocrisy.
"And as for Jean," her quiet voice analyzed, "what do you know of her, really? You've kept her shut away from the things that could hurt her, but how do you know what will happen when you open the gate?"
Yet Emily had said—? His hand came down on top of the desk. "I think we won't discuss Jean."