“Not in the accepted meaning of the term. I may be blinded by my own conceit. To settle matters, an old friend has gone to Como to see how my inamorata regards me.” “An old friend! Who is it that is so interested in my son?” He knew that his mother’s heart rebelled against the suggestion of a stranger taking part in affairs so vital to himself of which she had been kept in ignorance. With a well-assumed carelessness, he told her how Hooper and I were planning to expedite his wooing, and he so insisted on the humor of our dark conspiracy, when he was fully aware of each act and word, that he won a smile to her kindly face. Yet her alarmed perplexity did not abate. There was a subtle change in Karl which in no way escaped her. He was thinner, altogether unstrung and devitalized. She was conscious, too, of a physical tension in his attitude which was strangely at variance with the wonted suppleness of an athletic youngster of his fine proportions. “When does this embassy return?” she asked musingly. “I cannot say. You forget that I have not been consulted,” he grumbled with a well-feigned laugh. “And Mr. Hooper remains in London?” “That is a part of the plot.” “Very well. Be ready to take me to the hotel in half an hour. There is a flower-show at Richmond which I wish to visit. We shall call for Mr. Hooper, drive to Richmond, pass some time at the show, and return here for tea.” In a word, Karl was to be tied to his mother’s apron-strings for a while. And Hooper was to be drawn judiciously. It was a simple expedient; for Mrs. Grier had failed utterly to recognize the real nature of the problem which faced her, and not her alone, but all of us. Her son’s sixth sense had always remained a thing apart and wholly incomprehensible. She had heard little of it during recent years. The pranks he used to play occasionally served but to amuse her. Thus, he could summon any servant in the house by causing that particular domestic to fancy he or she heard a bell or a voice. He was exceedingly reliable as a weather prophet, especially when the conditions were settled for either rain or sunshine. Once, when a guest, a _malade imaginaire_, was bothering Mrs. Grier and her cook by the multiplicity of dishes he could not eat and the few he could eat but which disagreed with him, Karl made him tackle an outrageous meal of many courses with a hearty gusto. The poor man’s famished digestion stood the ordeal well, and he slept for twelve hours thereafter, to the great joy of the household and his own confusion.