Keeping her hands rigidly within her muff, and with a slight, dignified inclination of the head, she turned from him.

She was half-way to the door before Derek recovered himself sufficiently to speak.

“May I ask,” he inquired, “what your objections are?”

She turned where she stood, but did not come back toward him.

“I have only one.  The position you suggest would be intolerable to your daughter and odious to me.”

“But,” he asked, with a perplexed contraction of the brows, “isn’t it what companions to young ladies are generally engaged for?”

“I was never engaged as a companion before, so I’m not qualified to say.  I only know—­”

She stopped, as if weighing her words.

“Yes?” he insisted; “you only know—­what?”

“That no girl with spirit—­and Miss Pruyn is a girl with spirit—­would submit to that kind of tyranny.”

“It wouldn’t be tyranny in this case; it would be authority.”

“She would consider it tyranny—­especially after the freedom you’ve allowed her.”

“But you admit that it’s freedom that ought to be curbed?”

“Quite so; but aren’t there methods of restriction other than those of compulsion?”

“Such as—­what?”

“Such as special circumstances may suggest.”

“And in these particular circumstances—?”

“I’m not prepared to say.  I’m not sufficiently familiar with them.”

“Precisely; but I am.”

“You’re familiar with them from a man’s point of view,” she smiled; “but it’s one of those instances in which a man’s point of view counts for very little.”

“Admitting that, what would be your advice?”

“I have none to give.”

“None?”

She shook her head.  Leaving his fortified position by the mantelpiece, he took a step or two toward her.

“And yet when I began to speak you seemed favorably inclined to the offer I was making you.  You must have had ideas on the subject, then.”

“Only vague ones.  I made the mistake of supposing that yours would be equally so.”

“And with your vague ideas, your intention was—?”

“To adapt myself to circumstances; I couldn’t tell beforehand what they would be.  I imagined that what you wanted for your daughter was the society of an experienced woman of the world; and I am that, whatever else I may not be.”

“You’re very young to make the claim.”

“There are other ways of gaining experience than by years; and,” she added, with the intention to divert the conversation from herself, “the small store I happen to possess I was willing to share with your daughter, in whatever way she might have need of it.”

“But not in my way.”

“Not in your way, perhaps, but for the furthering of your purposes.”

“How could you further my purposes when you wouldn’t do what I wanted?”