"I--don't think so," she admitted. "Well, do be reasonable then. First of all tell me all about it." She nodded, and began at once, now and then lifting her eyes to his, mostly gazing fixedly at the gloves which she was smoothing carefully out upon her knee. "I think," she said, "that Lord Deringham is not so well. What he has been writing has become more and more incoherent, and it has been very difficult to copy it at all. I have done my best but he has never seemed satisfied; and he has taken to watch me in an odd sort of way, just as though I was doing something wrong all the time. You know he fancies that the work he is putting together is of immense importance. Of course I don't know that it isn't. All I do know is that it sounds and reads like absolute rubbish, and it's awfully difficult to copy. He writes very quickly and uses all manner of abbreviations, and if I make a single mistake in typing it he gets horribly cross." Wolfenden laughed softly. "Poor little girl! Go on." She smiled too, and continued with less constraint in her tone. "I didn't really mind that so much, as of course I have been getting a lot of money for the work, and one can't have everything. But just lately he seems to have got the idea that I have been making two copies of this rubbish and keeping one back. He has kept on coming into the room unexpectedly, and has sat for hours watching me in a most unpleasant manner. I have not been allowed to leave the house, and all my letters have been looked over; it has been perfectly horrid." "I am very sorry," Wolfenden said. "Of course you knew though that it was going to be rather difficult to please my father, didn't you? The doctors differ a little as to his precise mental condition, but we are all aware that he is at any rate a trifle peculiar." She smiled a little bitterly. "Oh! I am not complaining," she said. "I should have stood it somehow for the sake of the money; but I haven't told you everything yet. The worst part, so far as I am concerned, is to come." "I am very sorry," he said; "please go on."