Lady Charlotte, however, would be the foremost to swoop down on the secretary’s ideas about the education of women.

On that subject, Aminta said she did not know what to think.

Now, if a man states the matter he thinks, and a woman does but listen, whether inclining to agree or not, a perceptible stamp is left on soft wax.  Lord Ormont told her so, with cavalier kindness.

She confessed ‘she did not know what to think,’ when the secretary proposed the education and collocation of boys and girls in one group, never separated, declaring it the only way for them to learn to know and to respect one another.  They were to learn together, play together, have matches together, as a scheme for stopping the mischief between them.

’But, my dear girl, don’t you see, the devilry was intended by Nature.  Life would be the coldest of dishes without it.’  And as for mixing the breeched and petticoated in those young days—­’I can’t enter into it,’ my lord considerately said.  ‘All I can tell you is, I know boys.’

Aminta persisted in looking thoughtful.  ’Things are bad, as they are now,’ she said.

’Always were—­always will be.  They were intended to be, if we are to call them bad.  Botched mendings will only make them worse.’

‘Which side suffers?’

’Both; and both like it.  One side must be beaten at any game.  It’s off and on, pretty equal—­except in the sets where one side wears thick boots.  Is this fellow for starting a mixed sexes school?  Funny mothers!’

‘I suppose—­’ Aminta said, and checked the supposition.  ’The mothers would not leave their girls unless they were confident . . . ?’

’There’s to be a female head of the female department?  He reckons on finding a woman as big a fool as himself?  A fair bit of reckoning enough.  He’s clever at the pen.  He doesn’t bother me with his ideas; now and then I ‘ve caught a sound of his bee buzzing.’

The secretary was left undisturbed at his labours for several days.

He would have been gladdened by a brighter look of her eyes at her next coming.  They were introspective and beamless.  She had an odd leaning to the talk upon Cuper’s boys.  He was puzzled by what he might have classed, in any other woman, as a want of delicacy, when she recurred to incidents which were red patches of the school time, and had clearly lost their glow for her.

A letter once written by him, in his early days at Cuper’s, addressed to J. Masner, containing a provocation to fight with any weapons, and signed, ‘Your Antagonist,’ had been read out to the whole school, under strong denunciation of the immorality, the unchristian-like conduct of the writer, by Mr. Cuper; creating a sensation that had travelled to Miss Vincent’s establishment, where some of the naughtiest of the girls had taken part with the audacious challenger, dreadful though the contemplation of a possible duel so close to them was.  And