She was afraid of the unknown in her, yet unrevealed, quickening with instincts the parentage of which she knew nothing.

What might be these instincts of inheritance, how ominous their power, their trend, she did not know; from whom inherited she could never, never know.

Would engrafted and acquired instincts aid her; would training control this unknown heritage from a father and a mother whose very existences must always remain without concrete meaning to her?
Since that dreadful day two years ago when a word spoken inadvertently, perhaps maliciously, by Mrs.Van Dieman, made it necessary that she be told the truth; since the dazed horror of that revelation when, beside herself with grief and shame, she had turned blindly to herself for help; and, childish impulse answering, had hurled her into folly unutterable, she had, far in the unlighted crypt of her young soul, feared this unknown sleeping self, its unfolded intelligence, its passions unawakened.
Through many a night, wet-eyed in darkness, she had wondered whose blood it was that flowed so warmly in her veins; what inherited capacity for good and evil her soul and body held; whose eyes she had; whose hair, and skin, and hands, and who in the vast blank world had given colour to these eyes, this skin and hair, and shaped her fingers, her mouth, her limbs, the delicate rose-tinted nails whitening in the clinched palm as she lay there on her bed at night awake.
The darkness was her answer.
And thinking of these things she sighed unconsciously.
"What is it, Shiela ?" he asked.
"Nothing; I don't know--the old pain, I suppose." "Pain ?" he repeated anxiously.
"No; only apprehension.

You know, don't you?
Well, then, it is nothing; don't ask me." And, noting the quick change in his face--"No, no; it is not what you think.

How quickly you are hurt! My apprehension is not about you; it concerns myself.