Quite so! It would be a clever fellow
who would answer that, straight off. I say, Curzon, what a pretty girl
she is, though. Pretty isn't the word. Lovely, I----"

The professor gets up suddenly.

"Not that," says he, raising his hand in his gentle fashion--that has
now something of haste in it. "It--I--you know what I mean, Hardinge. To
discuss her--herself, I mean--and here----"

"Yes. You are right," says Hardinge slowly, with, however, an
irrepressible stare at the professor. It is a prolonged stare. He is
very fond of Curzon, though knowing absolutely nothing about him beyond
the fact that he is eminently likeable; and it now strikes him as
strange that this silent, awkward, ill-dressed, clever man should be the
one to teach him how to behave himself. Who _is_ Curzon? Given a better
tailor, and a worse brain, he might be a reasonable-looking fellow
enough, and not so old either--forty, perhaps--perhaps less. "Have you
no relation to whom you could send her?" he says at length, that sudden
curiosity as to who Curzon may be prompting the question. "Some old
lady? An aunt, for example?"

"She doesn't seem to like aunts" says the professor, with deep
dejection.

"Small blame to her," says, Hardinge, smoking vigorously. "_I've_ an
aunt--but 'that's another story!' Well--haven't you a cousin then?--or
something?"

"I have a sister," says the professor slowly.

"Married?"

"A widow."

("Fusty old person, out somewhere in the wilds of Finchley," says
Hardinge to himself. "Poor little girl--she won't fancy that either!")

"Why not send her to your sister then?" says he aloud.

"I'm not sure that she would like to have her," says the professor, with
hesitation. "I confess I have been thinking it over for some days,
but----"

"But perhaps the fact of your ward's being an heiress----" begins
Hardinge--throwing out a suggestion as it were--but is checked by
something in the professor's face.

"My sister is the Countess of Baring," says he gently.

Hardinge's first thought is that the professor has gone out of his mind,
and his second that he himself has accomplished that deed. He leans
across the table. Surprise has deprived him of his usual good manners.

"Lady Baring!--_your_ sister!" says he.

CHAPTER IX.

"Your face, my Thane, is as a book, where men
May read strange matters."

"I see no reason why she shouldn't be," says the professor calmly--is
there a faint suspicion of hauteur in