I'm sure I'd be proud to act for
ye in this matther. Faix I don't disguise from ye, Misther Curzon, dear,
that I feels like a mother to that purty child this moment, an' I tell
ye _this_, that if ye don't behave dacent to her, ye'll have to answer
to Mrs. Mulcahy for that same."

"What d'ye mean, woman?" roars the professor, indignantly. "Do you
imagine that I----?"

"No. I'd belave nothin' bad o' ye," says Mrs. Mulcahy solemnly. "I've
cared ye these six years, an' niver a fault to find. But that child
beyant, whin ye take her away to make her yer wife----"

"You must be mad," says the professor, a strange, curious pang
contracting his heart. "I am not taking her away to----I--I am taking
her to my sister, who will receive her as a guest."

"Mad!" repeats Mrs. Mulcahy furiously. "Who's mad? Faix," preparing to
leave the room, "'tis yerself was born widout a grain o' sinse!"

The meeting between Lady Baring and Perpetua is eminently satisfactory.
The latter, looking lovely, but a little frightened, so takes Lady
Baring's artistic soul by storm, that that great lady then and there
accepts the situation, and asks Perpetua if she will come to her for a
week or so. Perpetua, charmed in turn by Lady Baring's grace and beauty
and pretty ways, receives the invitation with pleasure, little dreaming
that she is there "on view," as it were, and that the invitation is to
be prolonged indefinitely--that is, till either she or her hostess tire
one of the other.

The professor's heart sinks a little as he sees his sister rise and
loosen the laces round the girl's pretty, slender throat, begging her to
begin to feel at home at once. Alas! He has deliberately given up his
ward! _His_ ward! Is she any longer his? Has not the great world claimed
her now, and presently will she not belong to it? So lovely, so sweet
she is, will not all men run to snatch the prize?--a prize, bejewelled
too, not only by Nature, but by that gross material charm that men call
wealth. Well, well, he has done his best for her. There was, indeed,
nothing else left to do.

CHAPTER X.

"The sun is all about the world we see,
The breath and strength of very Spring; and we
Live, love, and feed on our own hearts."

The lights are burning low in the conservatory, soft perfumes from the
many flowers fill the air. From beyond--somewhere--(there is a delicious
drowsy uncertainty about the where)--comes the sound of music, soft,
rhymical