‘This is to be your torture chamber. From the time I was five I have worked myself up to my present state of ignorance at that inky desk you see, and under the rule of a long line of governesses, most of whom gave me and themselves up in despair. Now put me to the test, if you please, Mr. Arbuthnot. Don’t spare my feelings. Treat me as you would treat any backward schoolboy.’ And Geff Arbuthnot obeyed the command to the letter. He did not spare her feelings. Marjory Bartrand’s attainments were to the last degree patchy and scrappy; the typical attainments to be looked for in a quick, self-willed child, indifferently taught by a succession of teachers, and whose faulty studies had been supplemented by an avid, indiscriminate consumption of good books. ‘Your classics are weak, Miss Bartrand.’ Geoffrey remarked this, pushing papers and books aside, and looking kindly across the table into his pupil’s face. ‘Oh! I never liked the subjects. I knew that you would say so.’ With an effort Marjorie Bartrand kept her voice under control. ‘But your classics are stronger than your mathematics.’ ‘Yes, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ ‘You will have a great deal of work before you can bring either to--we will not say a high, but an ordinary level.’ ‘Yes, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ ‘You spoke of a London degree. Let us look at London matriculation first. Children are trained at high schools for about six years, I understand, for London matriculation. And many--more than a third--of the candidates fail.’ ‘I spoke of London because London gives you letters after your name. The older Universities would be more thought of in Spain. I have grandpapa’s leave to go to Newnham or Girton when I am eighteen. The first of all my governesses lives in Cambridge. So I should have _one_ friend there.’ ‘The Girton and Newnham work is on the same level as the other colleges.’ ‘And you think that work beyond my reach?’ Geff Arbuthnot thought that a girl with a head so graceful, with eyes so blue, with soft brow gleaming under such a weight of dusky hair, might be content amidst the flower-scents and cedar-shades of Tintajeux Manoir, content to let Euclid and Greek particles go--to be a woman, to accept the homely, happy paths wherein women may walk unguided by exact science, or the philosophy of all the ancients. The opinions he knew were heterodox and not to be uttered, especially by a man who, at five shillings an hour, had engaged himself to lighten the thorny road that leads to knowledge. ‘Memory will get one through most exams., Miss Bartrand. You have a good memory?’ ‘For all useless things, yes. In “Don Quixote,” for instance, you would find it hard to puzzle me. You know a little Spanish?’ ‘Five words at most.’ ‘How deplorable! A person who has no Spanish is not quite in possession of his faculties. If one had time to spare in these long summer days, I----’