"Pardon me, Baron, if I intrude upon a few more seconds of your valuable time. You know nothing of my domestic circumstances. I have neither wife nor sweetheart, but I have a young sister, to whom I am very tenderly attached. I may take her with me on this journey?" Over Salmoros's usually kind face there crept a slight frown. He had not thought of this, and yet a young man was bound to have an entanglement of some sort. Fortunate that it was not a wife, still more fortunate that it was not a sweetheart. He knew the artistic temperaments well. One smile of a woman would outweigh much gold. Then the frown died away and the benevolent smile came back. He must reason with this young man calmly. "I take it you are very devoted to each other?" Nello answered fervently. "We think with one brain, we feel with one heart, sir. It will cut her to the quick for me to leave her behind." The Baron spoke musingly. Years ago he had had his love affairs like other men; but women had never entered into his scheme of things as they had in the case of his old friend Jean. They were meant for man's leisure, for his playtime; they could not be woven into the serious business of life. "That is all very well, Corsini, but hearts are not so easily broken by a little absence. One day you will leave her for a wife, one day she will leave you for a husband. I trust she will be sensible. You cannot go on this expedition hampered by a woman, whatever her relationship. You will come back to her soon." "How soon do you think, sir?" questioned Nello eagerly. "Say, in two or three months." The Baron's tone was a little hesitating. He knew in his own mind that there was a darker side to the picture, that there might be an altogether different ending to the journey. But he was not going to frighten the young man with that, or he might cry off at the last minute. Nello persisted; his love for his self-sacrificing little sister was very real, very deep. "She is young, in many things younger than her years, and utterly ignorant of the world. I cannot leave her alone, Baron, in the charge of a careless landlady. I would rather give up the whole thing and risk my chances here in London." The Baron thought to himself that here was a more difficult person to deal with than he expected. But it was not very long before his fertile brain solved the difficulty. "I understand. I am the last man in the world to suggest such an inhuman thing. I can make the way easy for you. Two dear friends of mine, old maids I suppose we must call them, have a big house in Kensington. They are very lonely, without any young relatives. At a word from me they would be delighted to take charge of her during your brief absence. Keep what money you have saved for yourself. I will charge myself with her maintenance, and she shall have plenty of pocket-money, I can assure you."