"Of course there are!" Jack said, for him quite warmly. And indeed that is the worst of barristers. They will argue in season and out of season if you do not agree with them quickly. "Some are as good--as good girls as my mother when you married her, sir." "Well, well, she may be a good girl--I do not know," the elder man allowed. "You always had a prejudice against the stage, sir." The Archdeacon looked up sharply, thinking this uncalled for; unless, horrible thought! his son knew something of the matter, and was chaffing him. He made an effort to get on firmer ground. "Granted she is a good girl," he said, "there are still two difficulties. Her father is a rascal, and there is a man, probably a rascal too, hanging about her, and likely to give trouble in another way." Jack nodded and sagely pondered the position. "I think I should advise your friend to get some respectable woman to live with the girl," he suggested, "and play the duenna--first getting rid of your second rascal." "But how will you do that? And what would you do about the father?" "Buy him off!" said Jack curtly. "As to the lover, have an interview with him. Say to him, 'Do you wish to marry my ward? If you do, who are you? If you do not, go about your business.'" "But if he will not go," the Archdeacon said, "what can my friend do?" "Well, indeed," replied Jack, looking rather nonplussed, "I hardly know, unless you make her a ward of court. You see," he added apologetically, "your friend's position is a little--shall I say a little anomalous?" The Archdeacon shuddered. He dropped his napkin and picked it up again, to hide his dismay. Then he plunged into a fresh subject. When his son upon some excuse left him early, he was glad to be alone. He had now a course laid down for him, and acting upon it, he next day saw the landlady in Sidmouth Street and requested her to take charge of the young lady in the event of the mother's death and to guard her from intrusion until other arrangements could be made. "You will look to me for all expenses," the Archdeacon added, seizing with eagerness the only ground on which he felt himself at home. To which the landlady gladly said she would, and accepted Mr. Yale's address at the Athenæum Club as a personal favour to herself. So the Archdeacon, free for the moment, went down to Studbury, and as he walked about his shrubberies with the scent of his wife's old-fashioned flowers in the air, or sat drinking his glass of Leoville '74 after dinner while Vinnells the butler, anxious to get to his supper, rattled the spoons on the sideboard, he tried to believe it a dream. What, he wondered, would Vinnells say if he knew that master had a ward, and that ward a play-actress? Or, as Studbury would prefer to style her, a painted Jezebel? And what would Mrs. Yale say, who loved lavender, and had seen a ballet--once? Was Archdeacon ever, he asked himself, in a position so--so anomalous before?