"She knows Greek pretty well?" he asked.

"Fairly, for the time she has learnt. She can read me bits of Lucian.
She would stumble over the tragedies. I read them to her." Then he
continued, as though it were a subject he loved, "She has a concrete
view upon every question; her critical faculty is marvelous. She never
lays down the law, but if you ask her, you have your answer in a
nutshell, the simplest truth, which it always appears to her so strange
that you have not seen all the time."

"What is her parentage? Heredity plays so large a part in these things,"
Mr. Derringham asked.

"The result of a passionate love-match between distant cousins of that
fine old race, I believe. Timothy La Sarthe was at Oxford before your
day, but not under me--a brilliant, enchanting fellow, drowned while
yachting when my little friend was only a few months old."

"And the mother?"

"Married again to pay his debts, to a worthy stockbroker, almost
immediately, I believe. She paid the debt with herself and died after
having three children for him in a few years."

"So your protégée lives with those cameos of the Victorian era we dined
with, and never sees the outside world?"

"Never--from one year's end to another."