Here she is now, at all events, at half-past twelve at night!

“Wasn’t it fortunate I found you?” says she.  She is laughing a little, and looking so content that the professor hasn’t the heart to contradict her—­though where the fortune comes in——­

“I’m starving,” says she, gaily, “will that funny little kettle soon boil?” The professor has lit a spirit-lamp with a view to giving her some tea.  “I haven’t had anything to eat since dinner, and you know she dines at an ungodly hour.  Two o’clock!  I didn’t know I wanted anything to eat until I escaped from her, but now that I have got you," triumphantly, “I feel as hungry as ever I can be.”

“There is nothing,” says the professor, blankly.  His heart seems to stop beating.  The most hospitable and kindly of men, it is terrible to him to have to say this.  Of course Mrs. Mulcahy—­who, no doubt, is still in the hall waiting for an explanation, could give him something.  But Mrs. Mulcahy can be unpleasant at times, and this is safe to be a “time.”  Yet without her assistance he can think of no means by which this pretty, slender, troublesome little ward of his can be fed.

“Nothing!” repeats she faintly.  “Oh, but surely in that cupboard over there, where you put the glass, there is something; even bread and butter I should like.”

She gets up, and makes an impulsive step forward, and in doing so brushes against a small ricketty table, that totters feebly for an instant and then comes with a crash to the ground, flinging a whole heap of gruesome dry bones at her very feet.

With a little cry of horror she recoils from them.  Perhaps her nerves are more out of order than she knows, perhaps the long fast and long drive here, and her reception from her guardian at the end of it—­so different from what she had imagined—­have all helped to undo her.  Whatever be the cause, she suddenly covers her face with her hands and burst into tears.

“Take them away!” cries she frantically, and then—­sobbing heavily between her broken words—­“Oh, I see how it is.  You don’t want me here at all.  You wish I hadn’t come.  And I have no one but you—­and poor papa said you would be good to me.  But you are sorry he made you my guardian.  You would be glad if I were dead! When I come to you in my trouble you tell me to go away again, and though I tell you I am hungry, you won’t give me even some bread and butter!  Oh!” passionately, “if you came to me starving, I’d give you things, but—­you——­”

"Stop!" cries the professor.  He uplifts his hands, and, as though in the act of tearing his hair, rushes from the room, and staggers downstairs to those other apartments where Hardinge had elected to sit, and see out the farce, comedy, or tragedy, whichever it may prove, to its bitter end.

The professor bursts in like a maniac!

CHAPTER VIII.