d my cause rather
than your brother's, will you not? This is an extraordinary demand to
make I know--but--I also know _you_."

"I would rather see her dead than married to my brother," says the
professor, slowly, distinctly.

"And----?" questions Hardinge.

The professor hesitates a moment, and then:

"What do you want me to do?" asks he.

"Do? 'Say a good word for me' to her; that is the old way of putting it,
isn't it? and it expresses all I mean. She reveres you, even if----"

"If what?"

"She revolts from your power over her. She is high-spirited, you know,"
says Hardinge. "That is one of her charms, in my opinion. What I want
you to do, Curzon, is to--to see her at once--not to-day, she is going
to an afternoon at Lady Swanley's--but to-morrow, and to--you
know,"--nervously--"to make a formal proposal to her."

The professor throws back his head and laughs aloud. Such a strange
laugh.

"I am to propose to her--I?" says he.

"For me, of course. It is very usual," says Hardinge. "And you are her
guardian, you know, and----"

"Why not propose to her yourself?" says the professor, turning violently
upon him. "Why give me this terrible task? Are you a coward, that you
shrink from learning your fate except at the hands of another--another
who----"

"To tell you the truth, that is it," interrupts Hardinge, simply. "I
don't wonder at your indignation, but the fact is, I love her so much,
that I fear to put it to the touch myself. You _will_ help me, won't
you? You see, you stand in the place of her father, Curzon. If you were
her father, I should be saying to you just what I am saying now."

"True," says the professor. His head is lowered. "There, go," says he,
"I must think this over."

"But I may depend upon you"--anxiously--"you will do what you can for
me?"

"I shall do what I can for _her_."

CHAPTER XIV.

"Now, by a two-headed Janus,
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time."

Hardinge is hardly gone before another--a far heavier--step sounds in
the passage outside the professor's door. It is followed by a knock,
almost insolent in its loudness and sharpness.

"What a hole you do live in," says Sir Hastings, stepping into the room,
and picking his way through the books and furniture as if afraid of
being tainted by them. "Bless me! what strange beings you scientists
are. Rags and bones your surroundings, instead of good flesh and blood.
Well, Thaddeus--hardly expected