"Well, talk then! I must do some typing," and she got up and went to her machine, which was on another table by the window. She knew perfectly well that she was driving him mad; it gave her a savage pleasure, and seemed a sort of balance to her own emotions on Christmas night about Algy. He came and leant against the mantelpiece and looked down at her and quoted Dryden: "She knows her man, and when you rant and swear Can draw you to her with a single hair." and stretching out his hand, he touched for an instant the faint broad waves on her forehead. And now he saw her eyes flash brilliantly enough! "If you are going to be impertinent, Mr. Strobridge, the staircase into the garden is quite close, and the sooner you find your way to it, the better I shall be pleased." "I would not be impertinent for the world--the temptation was overwhelming; it is so lovely, your hair--" His voice was quite sincere, and it was not in her plan to quarrel with him. "Very well." "I want to hear so many things about you, child--tell me what made you come to my aunt's?--I somehow cannot ever feel that you should be in any dependent position." "I came to educate myself--I do not mean to be dependent always--What do you do in the Foreign Office?" He gave her a brief sketch of his days. "Well, then," she said, "you have to do what you are told to also--nothing matters as long as the spirit is not dependent. You will be a Chief some day, I suppose?" "Perhaps--and are you learning here?" "Yes--and you could teach me if you liked." "I should quite adore it--what wages should I have?" "None." "Then that means, by the rules of all games, that I should be working for--love----" She shrugged her shoulders and put in another piece of paper in the typing machine. She had no intention of talking about--love---- "You are the queerest creature--you make me feel--I do not know what--Well, if you won't discuss wages--tell me what I am to teach you?" "Literature--Do you remember a day when I came in and had coffee in the dining-room?--It was before you knew I existed--You and Her Ladyship talked of the things then which I would like you to talk to me about." "Yes, was it not strange?--I must have been blind all those weeks." The sphinxlike smile hovered round Katherine's mouth; it was enigmatic and horribly tantalizing. Gerard Strobridge felt a rush of wild emotion again; the temptation to seize her in his arms and passionately kiss those mocking lips almost overcame him. It is quite doubtful what might have eventuated, if at that moment he had not caught sight of old Colonel Hawthorne in the rose garden. He had come out through the same little door which Katherine used, the passage from which, on the ground floor, led to the smoking-room. He waved his hand and beckoned to Gerard. It broke the spell, and drove some sense into the latter's head.