tiresome a
creation as I know--but not of your sister's party; and--I'm too old to
be sent to bed, even by a _Guardian_!!" She puts a very big capital to
the last word.

"I don't want to send you to bed," says the professor simply. "Though I
think little girls like you----"

"I am not a little girl," indignantly.

"Certainly you are not a big one," says he. It is an untimely remark.
Miss Wynter's hitherto ill-subdued anger now bursts into flame.

"I can't help it if I'm not big," cries she. "It isn't my fault. I can't
help it either that papa sent me to you. _I_ didn't want to go to you.
It wasn't my fault that I was thrown upon your hands. And--and"--her
voice begins to tremble--"it isn't my fault either that you _hate_ me."

"That I--hate you!" The professor's voice is cold and shocked.

"Yes. It is true. You need not deny it. You _know_ you hate me." They
are now in an angle of the hall where few people come and go, and are,
for the moment, virtually alone.

"Who told you that I hated you?" asks the professor in a peremptory sort
of way.

"No," says she, shaking her head, "I shall not tell you that, but I have
heard it all the same."

"One hears a great many things if one is foolish enough to listen,"
Curzon's face is a little pale now. "And--I can guess who has been
talking to you."

"Why should I not listen? It is true, is it not?"

She looks up at him. She seems tremulously anxious for the answer.

"You want me to deny it then?"

"Oh, no, _no_!" she throws out one hand with a little gesture of mingled
anger and regret. "Do you think I want you to _lie_ to me? There I am
wrong. After all," with a half smile, sadder than most sad smiles
because of the youth and sweetness of it, "I do not blame you. I _am_ a
trouble, I suppose, and all troubles are hateful. I"--holding out her
hand--"shall take your advice, I think, and go to bed."

"It was bad advice," says Curzon, taking the hand and holding it. "Stay
up, enjoy yourself, dance----"

"Oh! I am not dancing," says she as if offended.

"Why not?" eagerly, "Better dance than sleep at your age. You--you
mistook me. Why go so soon?"

She looks at him with a little whimsical expression.

"I shall not know you _at all_, presently," says she. "Your very
appearance to-night is strange to me, and now your sentiments! No, I
shall not be swayed by you. Good-night, good-bye!" She smiles at him in
the same sorrowful little way, and takes a step or two forwa