efined, with his future. I could see that she held, that she beguiled
him as no one had ever done. I didn't betray to him, however, that
perception, and I spent my night a prey to the consciousness that, after
all, it had been none of my business to provide him with the sense of
being captivated. To put him in relation with a young enchantress was
the last thing his mother had expected of me or that I had expected of
myself. Moreover it was quite my opinion that he himself was too young
to be a judge of enchantresses. Mrs. Pallant was right and I had given
high proof of levity in regarding her, with her beautiful daughter, as
a "resource." There were other resources--one of which WOULD be most
decidedly to clear out. What did I know after all about the girl except
that I rejoiced to have escaped from marrying her mother? That mother,
it was true, was a singular person, and it was strange her conscience
should have begun to fidget in advance of my own. It was strange she
should so soon have felt Archie's peril, and even stranger that she
should have then wished to "save" him. The ways of women were infinitely
subtle, and it was no novelty to me that one never knew where they would
turn up. As I haven't hesitated in this report to expose the irritable
side of my own nature I shall confess that I even wondered if my old
friend's solicitude hadn't been a deeper artifice. Wasn't it possibly a
plan of her own for making sure of my young man--though I didn't quite
see the logic of it? If she regarded him, which she might in view of his
large fortune, as a great catch, mightn't she have arranged this little
comedy, in their personal interest, with the girl?

That possibility at any rate only made it a happier thought that I
should win my companion to some curiosity about other places. There were
many of course much more worth his attention than Homburg. In the course
of the morning--it was after our early luncheon--I walked round to Mrs.
Pallant's to let her know I was ready to take action; but even while I
went I again felt the unlikelihood of the part attributed by my fears
and by the mother's own, so far as they had been roused, to Linda.
Certainly if she was such a girl as these fears represented her she
would fly at higher game. It was with an eye to high game, Mrs. Pallant
had frankly admitted to me, that she had been trained, and such an
education, to say nothing of such a performer, justified a hope of
greater returns. A