'You are apparently the black-sheep whose wool is dyed white. There are threads of gold in it. You look prosperous.' 'A few years ago I was actually in the possession of money. Then I became poor again. After a good many adventures I became a journalist. The profession is in America the refuge of the educated unsuccessful, and the hope of the uneducated unsuccessful. I am doing as well as journalists in America generally do: I am over here as the representative of a Francisco paper. And I expect to stay for some time--so long as I can be of service to my people. That's all.' 'Well--it might be a great deal worse. And won't you come to Pembridge Crescent with me?' 'When the cloud is lifted: not before. And--George--not a word about me. Don't tell--yet--even Elsie.' CHAPTER VI SOMETHING MORE HAPPENS Checkley held the door of the office wide open, and invited Elsie to enter. The aspect of the room, solid of furniture, severe in its fittings, with its vast table covered with papers, struck her with a kind of terror. At the table sat her guardian, austere of countenance. All the way along she had been imagining a dialogue. He would begin with certain words. She would reply, firmly but respectfully, with certain other words. He would go on. She would again reply. And so on. Everybody knows the consolations of imagination in framing dialogues at times of trouble. They never come off. The beginning is never what is expected, and the sequel, therefore, has to be changed on the spot. The conditions of the interview had not been realised by Elsie. Also the beginning was not what she expected. For her guardian, instead of frowning with a brow of corrugated iron, and holding up a finger of warning, received her more pleasantly than she had imagined it possible for him, bade her sit down, and leaned back, looking at her kindly. 'And so,' he said, 'you are twenty-one--twenty-one--to-day. I am no longer your guardian. You are twenty-one. Everything that is past seems to have happened yesterday. So that it is needless to say that you were a baby only yesterday.' 'Yes; I am really twenty-one.' 'I congratulate you. To be twenty-one is, I believe, for a young lady at least, a pleasant time of life. For my own part, I have almost forgotten the memory of youth. Perhaps I never had the time to be young. Certainly I have never understood why some men regret their youth so passionately. As for your sex, Elsie, I know very little of it except in the way of business. In that way, which does not admit of romance, I must say that I have sometimes found ladies importunate, tenacious, exacting, persistent, and even revengeful.' 'Oh!' said Elsie, with a little winning smile of conciliation. This was only a beginning--a prelude--before the unpleasantness.