utter I should like."

She gets up, and makes an impulsive step forward, and in doing so
brushes against a small rickety table, that totters feebly for an
instant and then comes with a crash to the ground, flinging a whole heap
of gruesome dry bones at her very feet.

With a little cry of horror she recoils from them. Perhaps her nerves
are more out of order than she knows, perhaps the long fast and long
drive here, and her reception from her guardian at the end of it--so
different from what she had imagined--have all helped to undo her.
Whatever be the cause, she suddenly covers her face with her hands and
bursts into tears.

"Take them away!" cries she frantically, and then--sobbing heavily
between her broken words--"Oh, I see how it is. You don't want me here
at all. You wish I hadn't come. And I have no one but you--and poor papa
said you would be good to me. But you are _sorry_ he made you my
guardian. You would be glad if I were _dead_! When I come to you in my
trouble you tell me to go away again, and though I tell you I am hungry,
you won't give me even some bread and butter! Oh!" passionately, "if
_you_ came to _me_ starving, I'd give _you_ things, but--you----"

"_Stop!_" cries the professor. He uplifts his hands, and, as though in
the act of tearing his hair, rushes from the room, and staggers
downstairs to those other apartments where Hardinge had elected to sit,
and see out the farce, comedy, or tragedy, whichever it may prove, to
its bitter end.

The professor bursts in like a maniac!

CHAPTER VIII.

"The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as
well for his defence against injury and violence as for his
repose."

"She's upstairs still," cries he in a frenzied tone. "She says she has
come _for ever_. That she will not go away. She doesn't understand.
Great Heaven! What I am to do?"

"She?" says Hardinge, who really in turn grows petrified for the
moment--_only_ for the moment.

"That girl! My ward! All women are _demons_!" says the professor
bitterly, with tragic force. He pauses as if exhausted.

"_Your_ demon is a pretty specimen of her kind," says Hardinge, a little
frivolously under the circumstances it must be confessed. "Where is she
now?"

"Upstairs!" with a groan. "She says she's _hungry_, and I haven't a
thing in the house! For goodness sake think of something, Hardinge."

"Mrs. Mulcahy!" suggests Hardinge, in anything but a hopeful tone.