it could not possibly be discussed with him, even in domino and male disguise.  “As for love,” her pupil wrote, “I suppose it is a real and not a fancied necessity of life.  A man, I mean, may go on a long time without it, but there will come a time—­do not you think so?—­when he is bound to feel the incompleteness of life without a woman to love.  We ought to train our boys and girls from the very beginning to regard love and marriage as the only things really worth having, because without them there is no happiness.  Give me your own experience.  I am sure you must have been in love at some time or other in your life.”

Anybody will understand that Iris could not possibly give her own experience in love-matters, nor could she plunge into speculative philosophy of this kind with her pupil.  Obviously the thing must come to an end.  Therefore she wrote a letter to him, telling him that “I.A.” would meet him, if he pleased, that very evening at the hour of eight.

It is by this time sufficiently understood that Iris Aglen professed to teach—­it is an unusual combination—­mathematics and heraldry; she might also have taught equally well, had she chosen, sweetness of disposition, goodness of heart, the benefits conferred by pure and lofty thoughts on the expression of a girl’s face, and the way to acquire all the other gracious, maidenly virtues; but either there is too limited a market for these branches of culture, or—­which is perhaps the truer reason—­there are so many English girls, not to speak of Americans, who are ready and competent to teach them, and do teach them to their brothers, and their lovers, and to each other, and to their younger sisters all day long.

As for her heraldry, it was natural that she should acquire that science, because her grandfather knew as much as any Pursuivant or King-at-Arms, and thought that by teaching the child a science which is nowadays cultivated by so few, he was going to make her fortune.  Besides, ever mindful of the secret packet, he thought that an heiress ought to understand heraldry.  It was, indeed, as you shall see, in this way that her fortune was made; but yet not quite in the way he proposed to make it.  Nobody ever makes a fortune quite in the way at first intended for him.

As for her mathematics, it is no wonder that she was good in this science, because she was a pupil of Lala Roy.

This learned Bengalee condescended to acknowledge the study of mathematics as worthy even of the Indian intellect, and amused himself with them when he was not more usefully engaged in chess.  He it was who, being a lodger in the house, taught Iris almost as soon as she could read how letters placed side by side may be made to signify and accomplish stupendous things, and how they may disguise the most graceful and beautiful curves, and how they may even open a way into boundless space, and there disclose marvels.  This wondrous world did the philosopher open to the