ght have appeared to provide against some danger of rebellion. I
was like a gaoler with an eye to possible surprises and escapes. But all
this belonged--I mean their magnificent little surrender--just to the
special array of the facts that were most abysmal. Turned out for Sunday
by his uncle's tailor, who had had a free hand and a notion of
pretty waistcoats and of his grand little air, Miles's whole title to
independence, the rights of his sex and situation, were so stamped upon
him that if he had suddenly struck for freedom I should have had nothing
to say. I was by the strangest of chances wondering how I should meet
him when the revolution unmistakably occurred. I call it a revolution
because I now see how, with the word he spoke, the curtain rose on the
last act of my dreadful drama, and the catastrophe was precipitated.
"Look here, my dear, you know," he charmingly said, "when in the world,
please, am I going back to school?"

Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough, particularly
as uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe with which, at all
interlocutors, but above all at his eternal governess, he threw off
intonations as if he were tossing roses. There was something in
them that always made one "catch," and I caught, at any rate, now so
effectually that I stopped as short as if one of the trees of the
park had fallen across the road. There was something new, on the spot,
between us, and he was perfectly aware that I recognized it, though,
to enable me to do so, he had no need to look a whit less candid and
charming than usual. I could feel in him how he already, from my at
first finding nothing to reply, perceived the advantage he had gained. I
was so slow to find anything that he had plenty of time, after a minute,
to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive smile: "You know, my
dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady ALWAYS--!" His "my dear" was
constantly on his lips for me, and nothing could have expressed more the
exact shade of the sentiment with which I desired to inspire my pupils
than its fond familiarity. It was so respectfully easy.

But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick my own phrases! I
remember that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed to see in
the beautiful face with which he watched me how ugly and queer I looked.
"And always with the same lady?" I returned.

He neither blanched nor winked. The whole thing was virtually out
between us. "Ah, of course, she's