“Would that be nonsense?” says the professor, with a faint smile.

They are sitting in the professor’s room with the windows thrown wide open to let in any chance gust of air that Heaven in its mercy may send them.  It is night, and very late at night too—­the clock indeed is on the stroke of twelve.  It seems a long, long time to the professor since the afternoon—­the afternoon of this very day—­when he had seen Perpetua sitting in that open carriage.  He had only been half glad when Harold Hardinge—­a young man, and yet, strange to say, his most intimate friend—­had dropped in to smoke a pipe with him.  Hardinge was fonder of the professor than he knew, and was drawn to him by curious intricate webs.  The professor suited him, and he suited the professor, though in truth Hardinge was nothing more than a gay young society man, with just the average amount of brains, but not an ounce beyond that.

A tall, handsome young man, with fair brown hair and hazel eyes, a dark moustache and a happy manner, Mr. Hardinge laughs his way through life, without money, or love, or any other troubles.

“Can you ask?” says he.  “Go on, Curzon.  What is she like?”

“It wouldn’t interest you,” says the professor.

“I beg your pardon, it is profoundly interesting; I’ve got to keep an eye on you, or else in a weak moment you will let her marry you.”

The professor moves uneasily.

“May I ask how you knew I had a ward?”

“That should go without telling.  I arrived here to-night, to find you absent and Mrs. Mulcahy in possession, pretending to dust the furniture.  She asked me to sit down—­I obeyed her.”

“‘How’s the professor?’” said I.

“‘Me dear!’ said she, ’that’s a bad story.  He’s that distracted over a young lady that his own mother wouldn’t know him!’

“I acknowledge I blushed.  I went even so far as to make a few pantomimic gestures suggestive of the horror I was experiencing, and finally I covered my face with my handkerchief.  I regret to say that Mrs. Mulcahy took my modesty in bad part.

“‘Arrah! git out wid ye!’ says she, ‘ye scamp o’ the world.  ’Tis a ward the masther has taken an’ nothin’ more.’

“I said I thought it was quite enough, and asked if you had taken it badly, and what the doctor thought of you.  But she wouldn’t listen to me.

“‘Look here, Misther Hardinge,’ said she.  ’I’ve come to the conclusion that wards is bad for the professor.  I haven’t seen the young lady, I confess, but I’m cock-sure that she’s got the divil’s own temper!’” Hardinge pauses, and turns to the professor—­“Has she?” says he.

“N—­o,” says the professor—­a little frowning lovely crimson face rises before him—­and then a laughing one.  “No,” says he more boldly, “she is a little impulsive, perhaps, but——­”

“Just so.  Just so,” says Mr. Hardinge pleasantly, and then, after a kindly survey of his companion’s features, “She is rather a trouble to you, old man, isn’t she?”