“Oh!  Impossible!” says the professor.  The color mounts to his brow.  He almost shakes off the little clinging fingers in his astonishment and agitation.  Has she no common sense—­no knowledge of the things that be?

She has drawn back from him and is regarding him somewhat strangely.

“Impossible to leave Aunt Jane?” questions she.  It is evident she has not altogether understood, and yet is feeling puzzled.  “Well,” defiantly, “we shall see!”

"Why don’t you like your Aunt Jane?” asks the professor distractedly.  He doesn’t feel nearly as fond of his dead friend as he did an hour ago.

“Because,” lucidly, “she is Aunt Jane.  If she were your Aunt Jane you would know.”

“But my dear——­”

“I really wish,” interrupts Miss Wynter petulantly, “you wouldn’t call me ‘my dear.’  Aunt Jane calls me that when she is going to say something horrid to me.  Papa——­” she pauses suddenly, and tears rush to her dark eyes.

“Yes.  What of your father?” asks the professor hurriedly, the tears raising terror in his soul.

“You knew him—­speak to me of him,” says she, a little tremulously.

“I knew him well indeed.  He was very good to me when—­when I was younger.  I was very fond of him.”

“He was good to everyone,” says Miss Wynter, staring hard at the professor.  It is occurring to her that this grave sedate man with his glasses could never have been younger.  He must always have been older than the gay, handsome, debonnaire father, who had been so dear to her.

“What were you going to tell me about him?” asks the professor gently.

“Only what he used to call me—­Doatie! I suppose,” wistfully, “you couldn’t call me that?”

“I am afraid not,” says the professor, coloring even deeper.

“I’m sorry,” says she, her young mouth taking a sorrowful curve.  “But don’t call me Miss Wynter, at all events, or ‘my dear.’  I do so want someone to call me by my Christian name,” says the poor child sadly.

“Perpetua—­is it not?” says the professor, ever so kindly.

“No—­’Pet,’” corrects she.  “It’s shorter, you know, and far easier to say.”

“Oh!” says the professor.  To him it seems very difficult to say.  Is it possible she is going to ask him to call her by that familiar—­almost affectionate—­name?  The girl must be mad.

“Yes—­much easier,” says Perpetua; “you will find that out, after a bit, when you have got used to calling me by it.  Are you going now, Mr. Curzon?  Going so soon?”

“I have classes,” says the professor.

“Students?” says she.  “You teach them?  I wish I was a student.  I shouldn’t have been given over to Aunt Jane then, or,” with a rather wilful laugh, “if I had been I should have led her, oh!” rapturously, "such a life!"

It suggests itself to the professor that she is quite capable of doing that now, though she is not of the sex male.