"What can be done? If that isn't like a man! Or I should say, a _gentleman_!... Why don't you plunge in boldly and damn the consequences?... It's just your sort that sends women into the arms of men like Flint. You're so busy keeping an eye on the proprieties that you miss all the danger signals." Her tone was extraordinarily familiar, and, to a man who rather prided himself upon his ability to keep people at arm's-length, it was not precisely agreeable. Yet he knew that it would be folly to give any hint of his irritation. "Well," he contrived to laugh back at her, "so far as I can see, Miss Robson's problems are quite too simple. After all, it's largely a question of money.... I can't go and throw gold in her lap as if she were some beggar on a street corner." "You mean, I suppose, that you are afraid to risk the outraged dignity of this ward of yours. I think that's a lovely name for her. Don't you?... You're acquiring such a benevolent old attitude. The only thing to be done, I fancy, is to adopt some transparent ruse--some sort of Daddy-Long-Leggish deception." She closed her eyes thoughtfully--"_Hiring_ her as my accompanist, for instance." She rose to dispense Scotch and soda. Stillman sat in thoughtful silence, while Mrs. Condor talked to very trivial purpose. She seemed suddenly to have grown tired of the subject of Claire Robson. The arrival of the expected dressmaker broke in upon the rather one-sided tête-à-tête. "You'll have to go," Lily Condor announced with an intimate air of dismissal to Stillman. "It would never do to let a mere man in on the secrets of the sewing-room." At the door he hesitated awkwardly over his good-by. "I was wondering," he said, "whether you were serious about ... about hiring Miss Robson as your accompanist. You know I think the plan has possibilities." She threw back her head and smiled with hard satisfaction. "I've been trying to figure if you had killed your imagination. Think it over." She gave him the tips of her fingers. He returned their languid pressure and departed. As he drifted down the hall he heard her calling, half gaily, half derisively, after him: "Don't decide on anything rash now.... Sleep over it!..." * * * * * He thought it over for three days and when he called on Lily Condor again he found her divorced from her languishing mood. She was dressed for dinner down-town, and he had to confess she had made the most of what remained of her flaming hair and dazzling complexion. He felt that she guessed the reason for his visit, although she took care to let him force the issue. "About Miss Robson," he said, finally, "I've concluded to take you at your word." Lily Condor smoothed out her gloves and laid them aside. "Take me at _my_ word? You're welcome to the suggestion, if that is what you mean. As a matter of fact I wasn't serious."