"I'm afraid she won't go back to her aunt any way," says the
professor, as a beginning to the "thinking it over." He pushes his
glasses up to his forehead, and finally discards them altogether,
flinging them on the table near.

"If she saw you now she might understand," says Hardinge--for,
indeed, the professor without his glasses loses thirty per cent.
of old Time.

"She wouldn't," says the professor. "And never mind that. Come back
to the question. I say she will never go back to her aunt."

He looks anxiously at Hardinge. One can see that he would part with
a good deal of honest coin of the realm, if his companion would only
_not_ agree with him.

"It looks like it," said Hardinge, who is rather enjoying himself.
"By Jove! what a thing to happen to _you,_ Curzon, of all men in the
world. What are you going to do, eh?"

"It isn't so much that," says the professor faintly. "It is what is
_she_ going to do?"

_"Next!"_ supplements Hardinge. "Quite so! It would be a clever
fellow who would answer that, straight off. I say, Curzon, what a
pretty girl she is, though. Pretty isn't the word. Lovely, I----"

The professor gets up suddenly.