too!" he muttered. "I wish we'd never seen those
two young men."

"It was a pity, perhaps," she admitted, "yet we had to do something. We
were absolutely stonybroke, as they say over here."

"Anyway, we've got to get out of this," the professor declared.

"My dear father," she replied, "I will agree that if a new city or a new
world could arise from the bottom of the sea, where Professor Franklin
was unknown, and his beautiful daughter Elizabeth had neyer been heard
of, it might perhaps be advisable for us to go there. As it is--"

"There is Rome," he exclaimed, "or some of the smaller places! We have
money for a time. We could get another draft, perhaps, from Wenham."

She shook her head. "We are just as safe here as anywhere on the
Continent," she remarked.

Once more he struck the table. Then he threw out his hands above his
head with the melodramatic instinct which had always been strong in his
blood.

"Do you think that I am a fool?" he cried. "Do you think I do not know
that if there were not something moving in your brain you would think
no more of that clerk, that bourgeois estate agent, than of the door-mat
beneath your feet? It is what I always complain about. You make use
of me as a tool. There are always things which I do not understand. He
comes here, this young man, under a pretext, whether he knows it or not.
You talk to him for an hour at a time. There should be nothing in
your life which I do not know of, Elizabeth," he continued, his voice
suddenly hoarse as he leaned towards her. "Can't you see that there is
danger in friendships for you and for me, there is danger in intimacies
of any sort? I share the danger; I have a right to share the knowledge.
This young man has no money of his own, I take it. Of what use is he to
us?"

"You are too hasty, my dear father," she replied. "Let me assure you
that there is nothing at all mysterious about Mr. Tavernake. The simple
truth is that the young man rather attracts me."

The professor gazed at her incredulously.

"Attracts you! He!"

"You have never perfectly understood me, my dear parent," she murmured.
"You have never appreciated that trait in my character, that strange
preference, if you like, for the absolutely original. Now in all my life
I never met such a young man as this. He wears the clothes and he has
the features and speech of just such a person as you have described, but
there is a difference."

"A difference, indeed!" the profess