nd public conduct it will probably be just the reverse. Then,
there will be much more collective control and much more insistence,
legal insistence, upon individual responsibility. But we are not living
in a new age yet; we are living in the patched-up ruins of a very old
one. And you--if you will forgive me--are living in the patched up
remains of a life that had already had its complications. This young
lady, whose charm and cleverness I admit, behaves as if the new age were
already here. Well, that may be a very dangerous mistake both for her
and for you.... This affair, if it goes on for a few days more, may
involve very serious consequences indeed, with which I, for one, do not
wish to be involved."

Sir Richmond, upon the hearthrug, had a curious feeling that he was back
in the head master's study at Caxton.

Dr. Martineau went on with a lucidity that Sir Richmond found rather
trying, to give his impression of Miss Grammont and her position in
life.

"She is," he said, "manifestly a very expensively educated girl. And
in many ways interesting. I have been watching her. I have not been
favoured with very much of her attention, but that fact has enabled
me to see her in profile. Miss Seyffert is a fairly crude mixture of
frankness, insincerity and self-explanatory egotism, and I have been
able to disregard a considerable amount of the conversation she has
addressed to me. Now I guess this Miss Grammont has had no mother since
she was quite little."

"Your guesses, doctor, are apt to be pretty good," said Sir Richmond.

"You know that?"

"She has told me as much."

"H'm. Well--She impressed me as having the air of a girl who has had
to solve many problems for which the normal mother provides ready made
solutions. That is how I inferred that there was no mother. I don't
think there has been any stepmother, either friendly or hostile?
There hasn't been. I thought not. She has had various governesses and
companions, ladies of birth and education, engaged to look after her
and she has done exactly what she liked with them. Her manner with Miss
Seyffert, an excellent manner for Miss Seyffert, by the bye, isn't the
sort of manner anyone acquires in a day. Or for one person only. She is
a very sure and commanding young woman."

Sir Richmond nodded.

"I suppose her father adores and neglects her, and whenever she has
wanted a companion or governess butchered, the thing has been done....
These business Americans,