Suddenly he had a flash of shrewder insight, and he was able to find comfort in that first suspicion, which now returned to him, that his mother was really responsible for this Celia affair. Why--and his awakened mind now ran over a score of memories--he had scarcely ever met Celia out without his mother having supplied the impulse for his going to the particular place! He had been a fool not to see how she had worked matters from the beginning. And now there arose in him a shade of resentment against her, and his man's independence revolted for the first time against this subtle subordination of his will to hers. He had a definite perception--attended with a distinct sense of shame--of the fact that he had never really ceased to be, so far as she was concerned, the good little boy who had learnt his letters at her knee. He had an individuality of his own, he told himself, and it behoved him to play the part of a man. He should begin his emancipation at once by putting a prompt stop to "this Celia business." CHAPTER III. AS Paul rang at the address Miss Brooke had scribbled down on his programme, his dominating thought was that American millionaire's daughters chose rather shabby houses to stay in. Though the name of the street had surprised him when he had first read it, he had yet conceived it possible she might be staying at some kind of private hotel; but he had not anticipated a dusty card with the word "apartments." He took it for granted her mother was with her, and, though he had not formed any clear conception of Mrs. Brooke, she looming mistily in his mind as a handsome, stately personage that had decidedly to be taken into the reckoning, he had wondered how she would receive him. A maid-servant ushered him up two flights of stairs into a front room and announced his name. As he entered he was conscious of three persons sitting at the far end where a bright fire burned, and was somewhat startled to recognise the long lithe figure, the dark face and hair, and the piercing black eyes of the American Miss Brooke had danced with. A peculiar shade of expression flitted across the man's face, telling Paul the recognition was mutual. At the same time Paul was assuming that the bonneted and cloaked mature-looking lady was no other than Mrs. Brooke herself, and he wondered why she should receive callers when so obviously dressed for going out. Miss Brooke rose to greet him with a pleasant smile of welcome. In a simple dress with wide sleeves that fitted tight round the wrists, her short front hair, evenly divided, falling over her temples in rippling masses, she seemed less phantasmal and fairylike, less remote from this world--a being more humanly sweet and that one might dare to woo.