The mother looked at her child and said that of all living creatures her child was surely the loveliest.

Was it not fit that she should go forth and be loved;--that she should at any rate go forth and take her chance with others?
But how should such going forth be managed?
And then,--were there not dangers, terrible dangers,--dangers specially terrible to one so friendless as her child?
Had not she herself been wrecked among the rocks, trusting herself to one who had been utterly unworthy,--loving one who had been utterly unlovely?
Men so often are as ravenous wolves, merciless, rapacious, without hearts, full of greed, full of lust, looking on female beauty as prey, regarding the love of woman and her very life as a toy! Were she higher in the world there might be safety.
Were she lower there might be safety.

But how could she send her girl forth into the world without sending her certainly among the wolves?
And yet that piteous question was always sounding in her ears.

"Mother, is it always to be like this ?" Then Lieutenant Neville had appeared upon the scene, dressed in a sailor's jacket and trowsers, with a sailor's cap upon his head, with a loose handkerchief round his neck and his hair blowing to the wind.
In the eyes of Kate O'Hara he was an Apollo.

In the eyes of any girl he must have seemed to be as good-looking a fellow as ever tied a sailor's knot.