.)

It seems to him a shame, and a pity too, but after all, old Curzon was
hardly meant by Nature to do the paternal to a strange and distinctly
spoilt child, and a beauty into the bargain.

"I don't think your guardian will have a good time," says he, bending
over her confidentially, on the strength of this decision of his.

"Don't you?" She draws back from him and looks up. "You think I shall
lead him a very bad life?"

"Well, as _he_ would regard it. Not as I should," with a sudden,
impassioned glance.

Miss Wynter puts that glance behind her, and perhaps there is
something--something a little dangerous in the soft, _soft_ look she now
turns upon him.

"He thinks so, too, of course?" says she, ever so gently. Her tone is
half a question, half an assertion. It is manifestly unfair, the whole
thing. Hardinge, believing in her tone, her smile, falls into the trap.
Mindful of that night when the professor in despair at her untimely
descent upon him, had said many things unmeant, he answers her.

"Hardly that. But----"

"Go on."

"There was a little word or two, you know," laughing.

"A hint?" laughing too, but how strangely! "Yes? And----?"

"Oh! a _mere_ hint! The professor is too loyal to go beyond that. I
suppose you know you have the best man in all the world for your
guardian? But it was a little unkind of your people, was it not, to give
you into the keeping of a confirmed bookworm--a savant--with scarcely a
thought beyond his studies?"

"He could study me!" says she. "I should be a fresh specimen."

"A _rara avis_, indeed! but not such as the professor's soul covets. No,
believe me, you are as dust before the wind in his learned eye."

"You think then--that I--am a trouble to him?"

"It is inconceivable," says he, with a shrug of apology, "but he has no
room in his daily thoughts, I verily believe, for anything beyond his
beloved books, and notes, and discoveries."

"Yet _I_ am a discovery," persists she, looking at him with anxious
eyes, and leaning forward, whilst her fan falls idly on her knees.

"Ah! But so unpardonably _recent_!" returns he with a smile.

"True!" says she. She gives him one swift brilliant glance, and then
suddenly grows restless. "How _warm_ it is!" she says fretfully. "I
wish----"

What she was going to say, will never now be known. The approach of a
tall, gaunt figure through the hanging oriental curtains at the end of
the conservatory checks her speech. Sir Hasting