After every visit to her house he has sworn to himself that "this one" shall be his last, and every Wednesday following he has gone again.  Indeed, to-day being Wednesday in the heart of June, he may be seen sitting bolt upright in a hansom on his way to the unlovely house that holds Miss Majendie.

As he enters the dismal drawing-room, where he finds Miss Majendie and her niece, it becomes plain, even to his inexperienced brain, that there has just been a row on, somewhere.

Perpetua is sitting on a distant lounge, her small vivacious face one thunder-cloud.  Miss Majendie, sitting on the hardest chair this hideous room contains, is smiling.  A terrible sign.  The professor pales before it.

“I am glad to see you, Mr. Curzon,” says Miss Majendie, rising and extending a bony hand.  “As Perpetua’s guardian, you may perhaps have some influence over her.  I say ‘perhaps’ advisedly, as I scarcely dare to hope anyone could influence a mind so distorted as hers.”

“What is it?” asks the professor nervously—­of Perpetua, not of Miss Majendie.

“I’m dull,” says Perpetua sullenly.

The professor glances keenly at the girl’s downcast face, and then at Miss Majendie.  The latter glance is a question.

“You hear her,” says Miss Majendie coldly—­she draws her shawl round her meagre shoulders, and a breath through her lean nostrils that may be heard.  “Perhaps you may be able to discover her meaning.”

“What is it?” asks the professor, turning to the girl, his tone anxious, uncertain.  Young women with “wrongs” are unknown to him, as are all other sorts of young women for the matter of that.  And this particular young woman looks a little unsafe at the present moment.

“I have told you!  I am tired of this life.  I am dull—­stupid.  I want to go out.”  Her lovely eyes are flashing, her face is white—­her lips trembling. "Take me out,” says she suddenly.

“Perpetua!” exclaims Miss Majendie.  “How unmaidenly!  How immodest!”

Perpetua looks at her with large, surprised eyes.

“Why,” says she.

“I really think,” interrupts the professor hurriedly, who see breakers ahead, “if I were to take Perpetua for a walk—­a drive—­to—­er—­to some place or other—­it might destroy this ennui of which she complains.  If you will allow her to come out with me for an hour or so, I——­”

“If you are waiting for my sanction, Mr. Curzon, to that extraordinary proposal, you will wait some time,” says Miss Majendie slowly, frigidly.  She draws the shawl still closer, and sniffs again.

“But——­”

“There is no ‘But,’ sir.  The subject doesn’t admit of argument.  In my young days, and I should think”—­scrutinising him exhaustively through her glasses—­"in yours, it was not customary for a young gentlewoman to go out walking, alone, with ’a man’!!" If she had said with a famished tiger, she couldn’t have thrown more horror into her tone.