hat of a child. Yet she was not a child,
but a remarkably clever and brilliant young woman, and he did not know
whether he ought to accept her homage. He was, for all his strange
career, somewhat conservative in his notions about women. He thought
that there ought to be a sweet reserve about them always. He rather
liked the pedestal theory about woman. The approaches and the devotion,
he thought, ought to come from the man always. In the case of Helena
Langley, it never occurred to him to think that her devotion was
anything different from the devotion of Hamilton; but then a young man
who is one's secretary is quite free to show his devotion, while a young
woman who is not one's secretary is not free to show her devotion.
Ericson kept asking himself whether Sir Rupert would not feel vexed when
he heard of the way in which his dear spoiled child had been going
on--as he probably would from herself--for she evidently had not the
faintest notion of concealment. On the other hand, what could Ericson
do? Give Helena Langley an exposition of his theories concerning proper
behaviour in unmarried womanhood? Why, how absurd and priggish and
offensive such a course of action would be? The girl would either break
into laughter at him or feel herself offended by his attempt to lecture
her. And who or what had given him any right to lecture her? What, after
all, had she done? Sat on a footstool beside the chair of a public man
whose cause she sympathised with, and who was quite old enough--or
nearly so, at all events--to be her father. Up to this time Ericson was
rather inclined to press the 'old enough to be her father,' and to leave
out the 'nearly so.' Then, again, he reminded himself that social ways
and manners had very much changed in London during his absence, and that
girls were allowed, and even encouraged, to do all manner of things now
which would have been thought tomboyish, or even improper, in his
younger days. Why, he had glanced at scores of leading articles and
essays written to prove that the London girl of the close of the century
was free to do things which would have brought the deepest and most
comprehensive blush to the cheeks of the meek and modest maidens of a
former generation.

Yes--but for all this change of manners it was certain that he had
himself heard comments made on the impulsive unconventionality of Miss
Langley. The comments were sometimes generous, sympathetic, and perhaps
a little pitying--and