As she says this she looks at him with the prettiest smile; it is a mixture of amusement and defiance. Hardinge, gazing at her, draws conclusions. ("Perfectly _hates_ him," decides he.) It seems to him a shame, and a pity too, but after all, old Curzon was hardly meant by Nature to do the paternal to a strange and distinctly spoilt child, and a beauty into the bargain. "I don't think your guardian will have a good time," says he, bending over her confidentially, on the strength of this decision of his. "Don't you?" She draws back from him and looks up. "You think I shall lead him a very bad life?" "Well, as _he_ would regard it. Not as I should," with a sudden, impassioned glance. Miss Wynter puts that glance behind her, and perhaps there is something--something a little dangerous in the soft, _soft_ look she now turns upon him. "He thinks so, too, of course?" says she, ever so gently. Her tone is half a question, half an assertion. It is manifestly unfair, the whole thing. Hardinge, believing in her tone, her smile, falls into the trap. Mindful of that night when the professor in despair at her untimely descent upon him, had said many things unmeant, he answers her. "Hardly that. But----" "Go on." "There was a little word or two, you know," laughing. "A hint?" laughing too, but how strangely! "Yes? And----?" "Oh! a _mere_ hint! The professor is too loyal to go beyond that. I suppose you know you have the best man in all the world for your guardian? But it was a little unkind of your people, was it not, to give you into the keeping of a confirmed bookworm--a savant--with scarcely a thought beyond his studies?" "He could study me!" says she. "I should be a fresh specimen." "A _rara avis_, indeed! but not such as the professor's soul covets. No, believe me, you are as dust before the wind in his learned eye." "You think then--that I--am a trouble to him?" "It is inconceivable," says he, with a shrug of apology, "but he has no room in his daily thoughts, I verily believe, for anything beyond his beloved books, and notes, and discoveries." "Yet _I_ am a discovery," persists she, looking at him with anxious eyes, and leaning forward, whilst her fan falls idly on her knees. "Ah! But so unpardonably _recent_!" returns he with a smile. "True!" says she. She gives him one swift brilliant glance, and then suddenly grows restless. "How _warm_ it is!" she says fretfully. "I wish----" What she was going to say, will never now be known. The approach of a tall, gaunt figure through the hanging oriental curtains at the end of the conservatory checks her speech. Sir Hastings Curzon is indeed taller than most men, and is, besides, a man hardly to be mistaken again when once seen. Perpetua has seen him very frequently of late. CHAPTER XI. "But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason, to perplex and dash Maturest counsels."