“Look here.  I’ll tell you,” says Hardinge’s voice at this moment.  “After all, you are her guardian—­her father almost—­though I know you scarcely relish your position; and you ought to know about it, and perhaps you can give me your opinion, too, as to whether there was anything in it, you know.  The fact is, I,”—­rather shamefacedly—­“asked her for a flower out of her bouquet, and she gave it.  That was all, and,” hurriedly, “I don’t really believe she meant anything by giving it, only,” with a nervous laugh, “I keep hoping she did!"

A long, long sigh comes through the professor’s lips straight from his heart.  Only a flower she gave him!  Well——­

“What do you think?” asks Hardinge after a long pause.

“It is a matter on which I could not think.”

“But there is this,” says Hardinge.  “You will forward my cause rather than your brother’s, will you not?  This is an extraordinary demand to make I know—­but—­I also know you."

“I would rather see her dead than married to my brother,” says the professor, slowly, distinctly.

“And——?” questions Hardinge.

The professor hesitates a moment, and then: 

“What do you want me to do?” asks he.

“Do?  ‘Say a good word for me’ to her; that is the old way of putting it, isn’t it? and it expresses all I mean.  She reveres you, even if——­”

“If what?”

“She revolts from your power over her.  She is high-spirited, you know,” says Hardinge.  “That is one of her charms, in my opinion.  What I want you to do, Curzon, is to—­to see her at once—­not to-day, she is going to an afternoon at Lady Swanley’s—­but to-morrow, and to—­you know,”—­nervously—­“to make a formal proposal to her.”

The professor throws back his head and laughs aloud.  Such a strange laugh.

“I am to propose to her—­I?” says he.

“For me, of course.  It is very usual,” says Hardinge.  “And you are her guardian, you know, and——­”

“Why not propose to her yourself?” says the professor, turning violently upon him.  “Why give me this terrible task?  Are you a coward, that you shrink from learning your fate except at the hands of another—­another who——­”

“To tell you the truth, that is it,” interrupts Hardinge, simply.  “I don’t wonder at your indignation, but the fact is, I love her so much, that I fear to put it to the touch myself.  You will help me, won’t you?  You see, you stand in the place of her father, Curzon.  If you were her father, I should be saying to you just what I am saying now.”

“True,” says the professor.  His head is lowered.  “There, go,” says he, “I must think this over.”

“But I may depend upon you”—­anxiously—­“you will do what you can for me?”

“I shall do what I can for her."

CHAPTER XIV.

    “Now, by two-headed Janus,
    Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.”