Before that--and leaving Scott absorbed in his grubbing, and Kathleen absorbed in watching him--Geraldine wandered back into the library and took down a book--a book which had both beguiled and horrified the solitude of her self-imprisonment.

It was called "Simpson on Heredity." There were some very hideous illustrated pages in that book; she turned to them with a fearful fascination which had never left her since she first read them.

They dealt with the transmission of certain tendencies through successive generations.
That the volume was an old one and amusingly out of date she did not realise, as her brown eyes widened over terrifying paragraphs and the soft tendrils of her glossy hair almost bristled.
She had asked Kathleen about it, and Kathleen had asked Dr.Bailey, who became very irritated and told Geraldine that anybody except a physician who ever read medical works was a fool.

Desperation gave her courage to ask him one more question; his well-meant reply silenced her.

But she had the book under her pillow.