‘Grandpapa is an eighteenth-century man. He was just born early enough to be able to make that his boast. And he has eighteenth-century ideas. “Unless a woman be a Madame de Staël,” says the Seigneur, “let her keep silent. If she be a Madame de Staël, let her keep a thousandfold more silent.” Now I,’ cried small Marjorie, ‘mean to make my voice heard. I want to know nineteenth-century life straight through. I want to learn facts, at first hand. As a matter of lesser moment, I want a degree. Do you think London University would be beyond me?’ ‘I must know first,’ answered Geoffrey, ‘to what height of learning you can reach on tiptoes.’ A flash of indignation swept over Marjorie’s face. The possibilities of temper showed round that acute, square-cut mouth of hers. ‘It is correct masculine taste to laugh at a girl’s ambition, I know! The Seigneur, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,--all have the same fine generosity! But why do we lose time? Perhaps, if you will come to the schoolroom, you will look over my books, sir. It is too late, of course, to do any work to-night?’ ‘Not too late for me,’ answered Geoffrey, in his heart liking the girl better and better. ‘I came out hoping we should begin to read at once. My time is yours.’ Miss Bartrand led the way, her face held somewhat aloft, into a room plainly furnished as a study, and strewed with books and papers, on the west side of the inner drawing-room. As Geoffrey followed, every sense tempered to a keener edge than usual, he could not help remarking with what curious grace Marjorie’s raven-black tresses were braided. He had been to a few, very few, London entertainments in his life, had glanced at most varieties of our current female ‘heads;’ none tolerable to him beside a certain recollection of soft gold worn in little waves, that way poor Dinah had with her curls, upon a Madonna forehead. But Marjorie’s ebon locks gathered high, in one thick coil, upon the summit of her head, compelled his admiration. The style was too foreign, altogether, for English taste. And the white and red dress, the gaudy waist ribbon, were too evidently got up for effect, Geoffrey decided, now that he could draw breath and criticise. The complexion, too, to a man who for years had had a living ideal of snow and rose-bloom before him, was certainly sallow. And those great black eyes.... Stopping short, Marjorie waited for her visitor on the schoolroom threshold. At the moment he overtook her, she turned, looked up at him. And behold! her eyes were blue; intensely blue as, I think, only Irish or Spanish eyes ever are; with a sweep of jetty lash, with a hidden laughter in them, although the possibilities of temper still lurked round the corner of her lips.