ready and quick-witted girl; nor did he ever lead her to believe that it was at all an unusual or an extraordinary thing for a girl to be so quick and apt for science as herself, nor did he tell her that if she went to Newnham or to Girton, extraordinary glories would await her, with the acclamations of the multitude in the Senate House and the praise of the Moderators.  Iris, therefore, was not proud of her mathematics, which seemed part of her very nature.  But of her heraldry she was, I fear, extremely proud—­proud even to sinfulness.  No doubt this was the reason why, through her heraldry, the humiliation of this evening fell upon her.

“If he is young,” she thought, “if he is young—­and he is sure to be young—­he will be very angry at having opened his mind to a girl”—­it will be perceived that, although she knew so much mathematics, she was really very ignorant of the opposite sex, not to know that a young man likes nothing so much as the opening of his mind to a young lady.  “If he is old, he will be more humiliated still”—­as if any man at any age was ever humiliated by confessing himself to a woman.  “If he is a proud man, he will never forgive me.  Indeed, I am sure that he can never forgive me, whatever kind of man he is.  But I can do no more than tell him I am sorry.  If he will not forgive me then, what more can I say?  Oh, if he should be vindictive!”

When the clock began to strike the hour of eight, Iris lighted her candles, and before the pulsation of the last stroke had died away, she heard the ringing of the house-bell.

The door was opened by her grandfather himself, and she heard his voice.

“Yes,” he said, “you will find your tutor, in the first floor front, alone.  If you are inclined to be vindictive, when you hear all, please ring the bell for me.”

The visitor mounted the stairs, and Iris, hearing his step, began to tremble and to shake for fear.

When the door opened she did not at first look up.  But she knew that her pupil was there, and that he was looking for his tutor.

“Pardon me”—­the voice was not unpleasant—­“pardon me.  I was directed to this room.  I have an appointment with my tutor.”

“If,” said Iris, rising, for the time for confession had at length arrived, “if you are Mr. Arnold Arbuthnot, your appointment is, I believe, with me.”

“It is with my tutor,” he said.

“I am your tutor.  My initials are I.A.”

The room was only lighted by two candles, but they showed him the hanging head and the form of a woman, and he thought she looked young, judging by the outline.  Her voice was sweet and clear.

“My tutor?  You?”

“If you really are Mr. Arnold Arbuthnot, the gentleman who has corresponded with I.A. for the last two years on heraldry, and—­and other things, I am your tutor.”

She had made the dreaded confession.  The rest would be easy.  She even ventured to raise her eyes, and she perceived, with a sinking of the heart, that her estimate of her pupil’s age was tolerably correct.  He was a young man, apparently not more than five or six and twenty.