“The world,” observed Malcourt, using his favourite quotation, “is so full of a number of things—­like you and me and that coral snake yonder....  It’s very hard to make a coral snake bite you; but it’s death if you succeed....  Whack that nag if he plunges!  Lord, what a nose for sarpints horses have!  Hamil was telling me—­by the way, there’s nothing degenerate about our distant cousin, John Garret Hamil; but he’s not pure pedigree.  However, I’d advise him to marry into some fresh, new strain—­”

“He seems likely to,” said Virginia.

After a moment Malcourt looked around at her curiously.

“Do you mean Shiela Cardross?”

“Obviously.”

“You think it safe?”—­mockingly.

“I wouldn’t care if I were a man.”

“Oh!  I didn’t suppose that a Suydam could approve of her.”

“I do now—­with envy....  You are right about the West.  Do you know that it seems to me as though in that girl all sections of the land were merged, as though the freshest blood of all nations flowing through the land had centred and mingled to produce that type of physical perfection!  It is a curious idea—­isn’t it, Louis?—­to imagine that the brightest, wholesomest, freshest blood of the nations within this nation has combined to produce such a type!  Suppose it were so.  After all is it not worth dispensing with a few worn names to look out at the world through those fearless magnificent eyes of hers—­to walk the world with such limbs and such a body?  Did you ever see such self-possession, such superb capacity for good and evil, such quality and texture!...  Oh, yes, I am quite crazy about her—­like everybody and John Garret Hamil, third.”

“Is he?”

She laughed.  “Do you doubt it?”

Malcourt drew bridle, fished for his case, and lighted a cigarette; then he spurred forward again, alert, intent, head partly turned in that curious attitude of listening, though Virginia was riding now in pensive silence.

“Louis,” she said at last, “what is it you hear when you seem to listen that way.  It’s uncanny.”

“I’ll tell you,” he said.  “My father had a very pleasant, persuasive voice....  I was fond of him....  And sometimes I still argue with him—­in the old humourous fashion—­”

“What?”—­with a shiver.

“In the old amusing way,” continued Malcourt quietly.  “Sometimes he makes suggestions to me—­curious suggestions—­easy ways out of trouble—­and I listen—­as you noticed.”

The girl looked at him, reined up closer, and bent forward, looking him intently in the eyes.

“Well, dear?” inquired Malcourt, with a smile.

But she only straightened up in her saddle, a chill creeping in her veins.

A few moments later he suggested that they gallop.  He was obliged to, for he had other interviews awaiting him.  Also Portlaw, in a vile humour with the little gods of high and low finance.