She had not anticipated the enrolment in her household of a man so young and good-looking.  These were qualifications for Cupid’s business, which his unstrained self-possession accentuated to a note of danger to her chicks, because she liked the taste of him.  Her grand-daughter Philippa was in the girl’s waxen age; another, Beatrice, was coming to it.  Both were under her care; and she was a vigilant woman, with an intuition and a knowledge of sex.  She did not blame Arthur Abner for sending her a good-looking young man; she had only a general idea that tutors in a house, and even visiting tutors, should smell of dust and wear a snuffy appearance.  The conditions will not always insure the tutors from foolishness, as her girl’s experience reminded her, but they protect the girl.

“Your name is Weyburn; your father was an officer in the army, killed on the battle-field, Arthur Abner tells me,” was her somewhat severely-toned greeting to the young tutor on his presenting himself the second time.

It had the sound of the preliminary of an indictment read in a Court of Law.

“My father died of his wounds in hospital,” he said.

“Why did you not enter the service?”

“Want of an income, my lady.”

“Bad look-out.  Army or Navy for gentlemen, if they stick to the school of honour.  The sedentary professions corrupt men:  bad for the blood.  Those monastery monks found that out.  They had to birch the devil out of them three times a day and half the night, howling like full-moon dogs all through their lives, till the flesh was off them.  That was their exercise, if they were for holiness.  My brother, Lord Ormont, has never been still in his youth or his manhood.  See him now.  He counts his years by scores; and be has about as many wrinkles as you when you’re smiling.  His cheeks are as red as yours now you’re blushing.  You ought to have left off that trick by this time.  It’s well enough in a boy.”

Against her will she was drawn to the young man, and her consciousness of it plucked her back to caution with occasional jerks—­quaint alternations of the familiar and the harshly formal, in the stranger’s experience.

“If I have your permission, Lady Charlotte,” said he, “the reason why I mount red a little—­if I do it—­is, you mention Lord Ormont, and I have followed his career since I was the youngest of boys.”

“Good to begin with the worship of a hero.  He can’t sham, can’t deceive —­not even a woman; and you’re old enough to understand the temptation:  they’re so silly.  All the more, it’s a point of honour with a man of honour to shield her from herself.  When it’s a girl—­”

The young man’s eyebrows bent.