She had come up with him now.  “May I have my sheet of paper, please?” she said with a catching of her breath.  She was a couple of inches less in height than he.  Do you observe her half-open lips? said Mother Nature in a noiseless aside to Mr. Lewisham—­a thing he afterwards recalled.  In her eyes was a touch of apprehension.

“I say,” he said, with protest still uppermost, “you oughtn’t to do this.”

“Do what?”

“This.  Impositions.  For my boys.”

She raised her eyebrows, then knitted them momentarily, and looked at him.  “Are you Mr. Lewisham?” she asked with an affectation of entire ignorance and discovery.

She knew him perfectly well, which was one reason why she was writing the imposition, but pretending not to know gave her something to say.

Mr. Lewisham nodded.

“Of all people!  Then”—­frankly—­“you have just found me out.”

“I am afraid I have,” said Lewisham.  “I am afraid I have found you out.”

They looked at one another for the next move.  She decided to plead in extenuation.

“Teddy Frobisher is my cousin.  I know it’s very wrong, but he seemed to have such a lot to do and to be in such trouble.  And I had nothing to do.  In fact, it was I who offered....”

She stopped and looked at him.  She seemed to consider her remark complete.

That meeting of the eyes had an oddly disconcerting quality.  He tried to keep to the business of the imposition.  “You ought not to have done that,” he said, encountering her steadfastly.

She looked down and then into his face again.  “No,” she said.  “I suppose I ought not to.  I’m very sorry.”

Her looking down and up again produced another unreasonable effect.  It seemed to Lewisham that they were discussing something quite other than the topic of their conversation; a persuasion patently absurd and only to be accounted for by the general disorder of his faculties.  He made a serious attempt to keep his footing of reproof.

“I should have detected the writing, you know.”

“Of course you would.  It was very wrong of me to persuade him.  But I did—­I assure you.  He seemed in such trouble.  And I thought—­”

She made another break, and there was a faint deepening of colour in her cheeks.  Suddenly, stupidly, his own adolescent cheeks began to glow.  It became necessary to banish that sense of a duplicate topic forthwith.

“I can assure you,” he said, now very earnestly, “I never give a punishment, never, unless it is merited.  I make that a rule.  I—­er—­always make that a rule.  I am very careful indeed.”

“I am really sorry,” she interrupted with frank contrition.  “It was silly of me.”

Lewisham felt unaccountably sorry she should have to apologise, and he spoke at once with the idea of checking the reddening of his face.  “I don’t think that,” he said with a sort of belated alacrity.  “Really, it was kind of you, you know—­very kind of you indeed.  And I know that—­I can quite understand that—­er—­your kindness....”