all the world as if you were perfectly ready to
accept certain consequences." She nodded in the direction of our young
companions, but I nevertheless put her at the pains of saying
what consequences she meant. "What consequences? Why the very same
consequences that ensued when you and I first became acquainted."

I hesitated, but then, looking her in the eyes, said: "Do you mean she'd
throw him over?"

"You're not kind, you're not generous," she replied with a quick colour.
"I'm giving you a warning."

"You mean that my boy may fall in love with your girl?"

"Certainly. It looks even as if the harm might be already done."

"Then your warning comes too late," I significantly smiled. "But why do
you call it a harm?"

"Haven't you any sense of the rigour of your office?" she asked. "Is
that what his mother has sent him out to you for: that you shall find
him the first wife you can pick up, that you shall let him put his head
into the noose the day after his arrival?"

"Heaven forbid I should do anything of the kind! I know moreover that
his mother doesn't want him to marry young. She holds it the worst of
mistakes, she feels that at that age a man never really chooses. He
doesn't choose till he has lived a while, till he has looked about and
compared."

"And what do you think then yourself?"

"I should like to say I regard the fact of falling in love, at whatever
age, as in itself an act of selection. But my being as I am at this time
of day would contradict me too much."

"Well then, you're too primitive. You ought to leave this place
tomorrow."

"So as not to see Archie fall--?"

"You ought to fish him out now--from where he HAS fallen--and take him
straight away."

I wondered a little. "Do you think he's in very far?"

"If I were his mother I know what I should think. I can put myself in
her place--I'm not narrow-minded. I know perfectly well how she must
regard such a question."

"And don't you know," I returned, "that in America that's not thought
important--the way the mother regards it?"

Mrs. Pallant had a pause--as if I mystified or vexed her. "Well, we're
not in America. We happen to be here."

"No; my poor sister's up to her neck in New York."

"I'm almost capable of writing to her to come out," said Mrs. Pallant.

"You ARE warning me," I cried, "but I hardly know of what! It seems
to me my responsibility would begin only at the moment your daughter
herself should seem in danger."

"Oh