to keep an
eye on you, or else in a weak moment you will let her marry you."

The professor moves uneasily.

"May I ask how you knew I _had_ a ward?"

"That should go without telling. I arrived here to-night to find you
absent and Mrs. Mulcahy in possession, pretending to dust the furniture.
She asked me to sit down--I obeyed her.

"'How's the professor?'" said I.

"'Me dear!' said she, 'that's a bad story. He's that distracted over a
young lady that his own mother wouldn't know him!'

"I acknowledge I blushed. I went even so far as to make a few pantomimic
gestures suggestive of the horror I was experiencing, and finally I
covered my face with my handkerchief. I regret to say that Mrs. Mulcahy
took my modesty in bad part.

"'Arrah! git out wid ye!' says she, 'ye scamp o' the world. 'Tis a
_ward_ the masther has taken an' nothin' more.'

"I said I thought it was quite enough, and asked if you had taken it
badly, and what the doctor thought of you. But she wouldn't listen to
me.

"'Look here, Misther Hardinge,' said she. 'I've come to the conclusion
that wards is bad for the professor. I haven't seen the young lady, I
confess, but I'm cock-sure that she's got the divil's own temper!'"
Hardinge pauses, and turns to the professor--"Has she?" says he.

"N----o,"--says the professor--a little frowning lovely crimson face
rises before him--and then a laughing one. "No," says he more boldly,
"she is a little impulsive, perhaps, but----"

"Just so. Just so," says Mr. Hardinge pleasantly, and then, after a
kindly survey of his companion's features, "She is rather a trouble to
you, old man, isn't she?"

"She? No," says the professor again, more quickly this time. "It is only
this--she doesn't seem to get on with the aunt to whom her poor father
sent her--he is dead--and I have to look out for some one else to take
care of her, until she comes of age."

"I see. I should think you would have to hurry up a bit," says Mr.
Hardinge, taking his cigar from his lips, and letting the smoke curl
upwards slowly, thoughtfully. "Impulsive people have a trick of being
impatient--of acting for themselves----"

"_She_ cannot," says the professor, with anxious haste. "She knows
nobody in town."

"Nobody?"

"Except me, and a woman who is a friend of her aunt's. If she were to go
to her, she would be taken back again. Perpetua knows that."

"Perpetua! Is that her name? What a peculiar one? Perpetua----"

"Miss Wynter," shar