did not christen myself," says she.
There is perhaps a suspicion of hauteur in her tone. "I am talking to
you about my _name_. You understand that, don't you?"--the hauteur
increasing. "Do you know, of late I have often wished I was somebody
else, because then I should have had a different one."

Hardinge, at this point, valiantly refrains from a threadbare quotation.
Perhaps he is too far crushed to be able to remember it.

"Still it is charming," says he, somewhat confusedly.

"It is absurd," says Perpetua coldly. There is evidently no pity in her.
And alas! when we think what _that_ sweet feeling is akin to, on the
highest authority, one's hopes for Hardinge fall low. He loses his head
a little.

"Not so absurd as your guardian's, however," says he, feeling the
necessity for saying something without the power to manufacture it.

"Mr. Curzon's? What is his name?" asks she, rising out of her lounging
position and looking, for the first time, interested.

"Thaddeus."

Perpetua, after a prolonged stare, laughs a little.

"What a name!" says she. "Worse than mine. And yet," still laughing, "it
suits him, I think."

Hardinge laughs with her. Not _at_ his friend, but _with_ her. It seems
clear to him that Perpetua is making gentle fun of her guardian, and
though his conscience smites him for encouraging her in her naughtiness,
still he cannot refrain.

"He is an awfully good old fellow," says he, throwing a sop to his
Cerberus.

"Is he?" says Perpetua, as if even _more_ amused. She looks up at him,
and then down again, and trifles with the fan she has taken back from
him, and finally laughs again; something in her laugh this time,
however, puzzles him.

"You don't like him?" hazards he. "After all, I suppose it is hardly
natural that a ward _should_ like her guardian."

"Yes? And _why_?" asks Perpetua, still smiling, still apparently amused.

"For one thing, the sense of restraint that belongs to the relations
between them. A guardian, you know, would be able to control one in a
measure."

"Would he?"

"Well, I imagine so. It is traditionary. And you?"

"I don't know about _other_ people," says Miss Wynter, calmly, "I know
only this, that nobody ever yet controlled _me_, and I don't suppose now
that anybody ever will."

As she says this she looks at him with the prettiest smile; it is a
mixture of amusement and defiance. Hardinge, gazing at her, draws
conclusions. ("Perfectly _hates_ him," decides he