"Then your warning comes too late," I significantly smiled. "But why do you call it a harm?" "Haven't you any sense of the rigour of your office?" she asked. "Is that what his mother has sent him out to you for: that you shall find him the first wife you can pick up, that you shall let him put his head into the noose the day after his arrival?" "Heaven forbid I should do anything of the kind! I know moreover that his mother doesn't want him to marry young. She holds it the worst of mistakes, she feels that at that age a man never really chooses. He doesn't choose till he has lived a while, till he has looked about and compared." "And what do you think then yourself?" "I should like to say I regard the fact of falling in love, at whatever age, as in itself an act of selection. But my being as I am at this time of day would contradict me too much." "Well then, you're too primitive. You ought to leave this place tomorrow." "So as not to see Archie fall--?" "You ought to fish him out now--from where he HAS fallen--and take him straight away." I wondered a little. "Do you think he's in very far?" "If I were his mother I know what I should think. I can put myself in her place--I'm not narrow-minded. I know perfectly well how she must regard such a question." "And don't you know," I returned, "that in America that's not thought important--the way the mother regards it?" Mrs. Pallant had a pause--as if I mystified or vexed her. "Well, we're not in America. We happen to be here." "No; my poor sister's up to her neck in New York." "I'm almost capable of writing to her to come out," said Mrs. Pallant. "You ARE warning me," I cried, "but I hardly know of what! It seems to me my responsibility would begin only at the moment your daughter herself should seem in danger." "Oh you needn't mind that--I'll take care of Linda." But I went on. "If you think she's in danger already I'll carry him off to-morrow." "It would be the best thing you could do." "I don't know--I should be very sorry to act on a false alarm. I'm very well here; I like the place and the life and your society. Besides, it doesn't strike me that--on her side--there's any real symptom." She looked at me with an air I had never seen in her face, and if I had puzzled her she repaid me in kind. "You're very annoying. You don't deserve what I'd fain do for you."