"I mentioned just now that there was no necessity for any nonsense between us, Miss Merton," said the Colonel quietly, "and that we are engaged on what is purely a matter of business. Let us understand each other exactly. You are my agent, my paid agent--I don't wish to hurt your feelings, but in business frankness is everything--to make inquiries and act for me in a certain matter, and you have come here to make me your report. There is no mystery about it so far as you are concerned, except that you are to know me in it as Mr. Wilson; but you will find, my dear Miss Merton, as you grow older, that in many of the most important business transactions in the world the name of the principal is not allowed to transpire. Do I make myself clear?" Miss Merton, though still young, has plenty of _savoir faire_. She takes her cue at once; lays aside her giggling, demure, and blushing friskiness, and comes to the point. "Perfectly, Mr. Wilson," she replied. "I received your telegram, and am here obedient to it." "That is very right, very prompt, and very much to the purpose," says the Colonel. "I ask you to meet me here, because in your note received this morning you seem to intimate that things were not going quite as comfortable as I could wish with our young friend--Fanny, I think you call her. Is not that her name?" "Yes; Fanny Stafford." "Very well, then; in future we will always speak of her as Fanny, or Miss Stafford, as occasion may require. Will you be good enough now to enter into farther particulars?" "Well, you see, Mr. Wilson"--and the girl cannot help smiling as she repeats his name, for Colonel Orpington looks so utterly unlike any possible Mr. Wilson--"Fanny has grown dull and out of sorts lately; and I cannot help thinking, from some words she has occasionally dropped, that she is anxious to leave Madame Clarisse, and settle herself in life." "I don't know that I should prove any obstacle to that," says the Colonel; "it would depend, of course, on the manner in which she proposed to settle herself." "Of course," says the girl, looking at him keenly; "that is just it; and, if I may be excused for saying so, I don't think hers was in your way." "Very likely not. Please understand you are to say everything and anything that comes into your head and you think relates to the business we have in hand. I imagine, from the hint in your letter, that the gentleman of whom we have spoken, Mr. ----, how do you call him?" "Mr. Douglas--Paul Douglas." "Ay, Mr. Douglas--had come to town. On inquiry, I find this is not the case." "No, but she hears from him constantly; and though she never shows me his letters, I can gather from what she says that there has been something in the last one or two of them which has upset her very much." "You have not the least idea what this something may be? Do you imagine he proposes to break with her?"