The professor says nothing.  He is staring at her.  He is beginning to feel a little forlorn.  He has forgotten youth for many days, has youth in revenge forgotten him?

“That is taking off a clear hundred at once,” says she lightly.  “No small account.”  Here, as if noticing his silence, she looks quickly at him, and perhaps something in his face strikes her, because she goes on hurriedly.  “Oh! and what is age after all?  I wish I were old, and then I should be able to get away from Aunt Jane—­without—­without any trouble."

“I am afraid you are indeed very unhappy here,” says the professor gravely.

“I hate the place,” cries she with a frown.  “I shan’t be able to stay here.  Oh! why didn’t poor papa send me to live with you?”

Why indeed?  That is exactly what the professor finds great difficulty in explaining to her.  An “old man” of “fifty” might very easily give a home to a young girl, without comment from the world.  But then if an “old man of fifty” wasn’t an old man of fifty——­ The professor checks his thoughts, they are growing too mixed.

“We should have been so happy,” Perpetua is going on, her tone regretful.  “We could have gone everywhere together, you and I. I should have taken you to the theatre, to balls, to concerts, to afternoons.  You would have been so happy, and so should I. You would—­wouldn’t you?”

The professor nods his head.  The awful vista she has opened up to him has completely deprived him of speech.

“Ah! yes,” sighs she, taking that deceitful nod in perfect good faith.  “And you would have been good to me too, and let me look in at the shop windows.  I should have taken such care of you, and made your tea for you, just” sadly, “as I used to do for poor papa, and——­”

It is becoming too much for the professor.

“It is late.  I must go,” says he.

It is a week later when he meets her again.  The season is now at its height, and some stray wave of life casting the professor into a fashionable thoroughfare, he there finds her.

Marching along, as usual, with his head in the air, and his thoughts in the ages when dates were unknown, a soft, eager voice calling his name brings him back to the fact that he is walking up Bond Street.

In a carriage, exceedingly well appointed, and with her face wreathed in smiles, and one hand impulsively extended, sits Perpetua.  Evidently the owner of the carriage is in the shop making purchases, whilst Perpetua sits without, awaiting her.

“Were you going to cut me?” cries she.  “What luck to meet you here.  I am having such a lovely day.  Mrs. Constans has taken me out with her, and I am to dine with her, and go with her to a concert in the evening.”

She has poured it all out, all her good news in a breath, as though sure of a sympathetic listener.

He is too good a listener.  He is listening so hard, he is looking so intensely, that he forgets to speak, and Perpetua’s sudden gaiety forsakes her.  Is he angry?  Does he think——?