I don't know what can be said for a maid who, in her mistress's absence, uses her mistress's own pretty sitting-room to receive her--the maid's--own visitors. Well, I couldn't help it. Here the situation was forced upon me--I, in my cap and apron, standing on Miss Million's pink hearthrug in front of the fern-filled fireplace, and facing Mr. Brace, very blonde and grave-looking, in his "bank" clothes. "Will you sit down?" I said, standing myself as if I never meant to depart from that attitude. He didn't sit down. "I won't keep you, Miss Lovelace," said the young bank manager, in a much more formal tone than I had heard from him before. "But I was obliged to call because, after I had sent off my note to you, I found I was required to leave town on business to-morrow morning early. Consequently I should only be able to speak to you about the matter which I mentioned in my note if I came at once." "Oh, yes," I said. "And the important matter was----" "It's about your friend, Miss Million." "My mistress," I reminded him, fingering my apron. The young man looked very uncomfortable. Being so fair, he reddens easily. He looks much less grown-up and reliable than he had seemed that first morning at the bank. I wonder how this is. He looked at the apron and said: "Well, if you must call her your mistress--I don't think it's at all--but, never mind that now--about Miss Million." "Don't tell me all her money's suddenly lost!" I cried in a quick fright. The manager shook his fair head. "Oh, nothing of that kind. No. Something almost as difficult to tell you, though. But I felt I had to do it, Miss Lovelace." His fair face set itself into a sort of conscientious mask. "I turned to you instead of to her because--well, because for obvious reasons you were the one to turn to. "Miss Million is a young--a young lady who seems at present to have more money than friends. It is natural that, just now, she should be making a number of new acquaintances. It is also natural that she should not always know which of these acquaintances are a wise choice----" "Oh, I know what you mean," I interposed, for I thought he was going on in that rather sermony style until Million came home. "You're going to warn me that Mr. Burke, whom you met here, isn't a fit person for Mill--for Miss Million to know." Mr. Brace looked relieved, yet uncomfortable and a little annoyed all at once. He said: "I don't know that I should have put it in exactly those words, Miss Lovelace." "No, but that's the gist of it all," I said rather shortly. Men are so roundabout. They take ages hinting at things that can be put into one short sentence. Then they're angry because some woman takes a short cut and translates. "Isn't that what you mean, Mr. Brace?" "If I had a young sister," said this roundabout Mr. Brace, "I certainly do not think that I should care to allow her to associate with a man like that." "Like what?" I said. "Like this Mr. Burke." "Why?" I asked.