“I’ll make it as small as you please, if you want to talk to him afterwards. Why should not I ask him to drop in to lunch? that will be more informal, and besides, we really haven’t a spare evening for three weeks to come.” “A capital idea! Yes, ask him to lunch. Only he may not have a spare morning for as many weeks. Don’t forget Josephine: meantime we’ll go to our beds and have a sleep or two. Who sat beside you at dinner?” “Lord Lullworth. A nice--no, he might be nice only that he’s pig-headed. He ridiculed the school.” They had walked towards the house, and now they were standing together at the foot of the flight of steps leading to the door by which they meant to enter. “He ridiculed the school, did he? Well, your friend Willie Bateman will tell us that he could not do more for the school than that. By the way, did this Mr. Winwood bind you down to secrecy in regard to his story?” “On the contrary he asked me to tell it to you; but now that I come to think of it he said he would rather that I didn’t tell it to Mr. Richmond: you see I suggested before he told it to me that it would serve--possibly--as an exercise for one of the classes.” “I think he was right. I would advise you to refrain from telling it to Mr. Richmond or in fact to any one. I would even go the length of refraining from telling it to Josephine.” “What! oh, he did not tell me to keep it such a secret as all that. Why shouldn’t I tell it to Joe?” “Why should you tell it to her. It may concern this Mr. Winwood more closely than you think. You remember what the knowing man says in one of Angler’s comedies?--‘When any one tells me a story of what happened to a friend of his, I know pretty well who that friend is.’” “You mean to say that it is--that it was----” “I mean to say nothing more, and I would advise you to follow my example. Good-night, my dear. Don’t give too much of your thought to the question of who Mr. Winwood’s friend is--or was. He told you he was dead, didn’t he?” “Yes, he said that he was dead and that he didn’t even know what his name was.” “Ah, well, I have the better of him there. Goodnight.” He kissed her, and she suffered herself to be kissed by him, but was too far lost in thought to be able to return his valediction. She went to her dressing-room; but she heard her father go down the corridor to his study before she had reached the first lobby. She could not, however, hear the way he paced the floor of his study for some minutes before throwing himself upon his sofa, or she might have come to the conclusion that the story which she had repeated to him concerned him much more closely than it did. But he was a scientific man and his methods of thought were scientific.