Nina came in presently to find him seated before the fire, one hand shading his eyes; and, as he prepared to rise, she rested both arms on his shoulders, forcing him into his chair again.

“So you’ve bewitched Eileen, too, have you?” she said tenderly.  “Isn’t she the sweetest little thing?”

“She’s—­ah—­as tall as I am,” he said, blinking at the fire.

“She’s only nineteen; pathetically unspoiled—­a perfect dear.  Men are going to rave over her and—­not spoil her.  Did you ever see such hair?—­that thick, ruddy, lustrous, copper tint?—­and sometimes it’s like gold afire.  And a skin like snow and peaches!—­she’s sound to the core.  I’ve had her exercised and groomed and hardened and trained from the very beginning—­every inch of her minutely cared for exactly like my own babies.  I’ve done my best,” she concluded with a satisfied sigh, and dropped into a chair beside her brother.

“Thoroughbred,” commented Selwyn, “to be turned out to-night.  Is she bridle-wise and intelligent?”

“More than sufficiently.  That’s one trouble—­she’s had, at times, a depressing, sponge-like desire for absorbing all sorts of irrelevant things that no girl ought to concern herself with.  I—­to tell the truth—­if I had not rigorously drilled her—­she might have become a trifle tiresome; I don’t mean precisely frumpy—­but one of those earnest young things whose intellectual conversation becomes a visitation—­one of the wants-to-know-for-the-sake-of-knowledge sort—­a dreadful human blotter!  Oh, dear; show me a girl with her mind soaking up ‘isms’ and I’ll show you a social failure with a wisp of hair on her cheek, who looks the dowdier the more expensively she’s gowned.”

“So you believe you’ve got that wisp of copper-tinted hair tucked up snugly?” asked Selwyn, amused.

“I—­it’s still a worry to me; at intervals she’s inclined to let it slop.  Thank Heaven, I’ve made her spine permanently straight and her head is screwed properly to her neck.  There’s not a slump to her from crown to heel—­I know, you know.  She’s had specialists to forestall every blemish.  I made up my mind to do it; I’m doing it for my own babies.  That’s what a mother is for—­to turn out her offspring to the world as flawless and wholesome as when they came into it!—­physically and mentally sound—­or a woman betrays her stewardship.  They must be as healthy of body and limb as they are innocent and wholesome minded.  The happiest of all creatures are drilled thoroughbreds.  Show me a young girl, unspoiled mentally and spiritually untroubled, with a superb physique, and I’ll show you a girl equipped for the happiness of this world.  And that is what Eileen is.”

“I should say,” observed Selwyn, “that she’s equipped for the slaughter of man.”

“Yes, but I am selecting the victim,” replied his sister demurely.

“Oh!  Have you?  Already?”

“Tentatively.”