“Yes, he will come again, and that brings me to what I intended to say to you, my dear Roma, as soon as I knew that you had returned to live here alone, and before I had heard the sad story you told me this morning.” “Speak your mind, dear Dr. Shaw. I shall be grateful for your counsel. It was to seek it, you know, that I begged your presence here this morning,” Roma replied. “Then, my dear girl, this is what I wished to say to you—that since you declined to accompany your relatives abroad, and have decided to live here, in this remote manor house, you should not live alone.” “I do not. I have faithful servants and powerful dogs. I am perfectly safe here,” said Miss Fronde. “In person, yes, perhaps. But that is not the question, my dear. You will understand me when I say that you should have some elderly, respectable woman—some lady, in fact—to live with you as your chaperon and companion.” “Oh!” exclaimed Miss Fronde. “Should I? Is that necessary?” “Absolutely necessary, in my opinion, Roma.” “Cannot a woman, nearly twenty-three years of age, who is intrusted with the management of a large estate and the expenditure of a princely revenue, be also trusted with the care of herself?” “Not in the opinion of the world, my dear Roma. For the world rates—and rightly rates—a woman’s fair reputation far above land or money,” gravely replied the old minister. Roma’s fair face flushed crimson to the edges of her blond hair. “But,” she said, somewhat indignantly, “I think the world places a very low and evil estimate on woman when it presumes to infer that because she is neither married, widowed nor aged, she cannot, therefore, be trusted to preserve her own good name and fair fame.” “Perhaps so, my child,” temperately replied the old rector, “but we are not the autocrats of society; public opinion is, and it is generally right; so that in every instance in which it does not conflict with conscience we should submit to its laws.” “Very well, Dr. Shaw. I will advertise for an elderly lady as chaperon, though I do shrink from having the constant companionship of a perfect stranger,” said Roma submissively. “Well, child, it is a risk, I know; for even in the most respectable woman, most highly recommended, you may chance to find an uncongenial companion, or you may find a ‘perfect treasure.’ But you can always get rid of one who does not suit.” “Oh, no,” said Roma, “that is just what I could never do. Once having taken a ‘poor lady,’ as such a person must be, into the house, I should not like to send her away.” “No,” said Mr. Merritt, breaking into the tête-à-tête for the first time, “Roma would keep her for the term of her natural life, however disagreeable she might be—an incubus, an old man of the sea. So you must be very careful, my dear girl, in your selection of a chaperon—as careful as a man should be in the choosing of a wife.” A summons to dinner broke up the conference.