you needn't mind that--I'll take care of Linda."

But I went on. "If you think she's in danger already I'll carry him off
to-morrow."

"It would be the best thing you could do."

"I don't know--I should be very sorry to act on a false alarm. I'm very
well here; I like the place and the life and your society. Besides, it
doesn't strike me that--on her side--there's any real symptom."

She looked at me with an air I had never seen in her face, and if I
had puzzled her she repaid me in kind. "You're very annoying. You don't
deserve what I'd fain do for you."

What she'd fain do for me she didn't tell me that day, but we took up
the subject again. I remarked that I failed to see why we should
assume that a girl like Linda--brilliant enough to make one of the
greatest--would fall so very easily into my nephew's arms. Might
I enquire if her mother had won a confession from her, if she had
stammered out her secret? Mrs. Pallant made me, on this, the point
that they had no need to tell each other such things--they hadn't lived
together twenty years in such intimacy for nothing. To which I returned
that I had guessed as much, but that there might be an exception for
a great occasion like the present. If Linda had shown nothing it was a
sign that for HER the occasion wasn't great; and I mentioned that Archie
had spoken to me of the young lady only to remark casually and rather
patronisingly, after his first encounter with her, that she was a
regular little flower. (The little flower was nearly three years older
than himself.) Apart from this he hadn't alluded to her and had taken
up no allusion of mine. Mrs. Pallant informed me again--for which I
was prepared--that I was quite too primitive; after which she said: "We
needn't discuss the case if you don't wish to, but I happen to know--how
I obtained my knowledge isn't important--that the moment Mr. Parker
should propose to my daughter she'd gobble him down. Surely it's a
detail worth mentioning to you."

I sought to defer then to her judgement. "Very good. I'll sound him.
I'll look into the matter tonight."

"Don't, don't; you'll spoil everything!" She spoke as with some finer
view. "Remove him quickly--that's the only thing."

I didn't at all like the idea of removing him quickly; it seemed too
summary, too extravagant, even if presented to him on specious grounds;
and moreover, as I had told Mrs. Pallant, I really had no wish to
change my scene. It was no part of my p