"Oh no, sir; the likes was never known. 'Tis the father or one of
his belongings as gives away the bride, _niver_ the husband to be,
an' if ye _have_ nobody, sir, you two, why I'm sure I'd be proud to
act for ye in this matther. Faix I don't disguise from ye, Misther
Curzon, dear, that I feels like a mother to that purty child this
moment, an' I tell ye _this,_ that if ye don't behave dacent to her,
ye'll have to answer to Mrs. Mulcahy for that same."

"What d'ye mean, woman?" roars the professor, indignantly. "Do you
imagine that _--_--?"

"No. I'd belave nothin' bad o' ye," says Mrs. Mulcahy solemnly.
"I've cared ye these six years, an' niver a fault to find. But that
child beyant, whin ye take her away to make her yer wife----"

"You must be mad," says the professor, a strange, curious pang
contracting his heart. "I am not taking her away to---- I--I am
taking her to my sister, who will receive her as a guest."

"Mad!" repeats Mrs. Mulcahy furiously. "Who's mad? Faix," preparing
to leave the room, "'tis yerself was born widout a grain o' sinse!"

The meeting between Lady Baring and Perpetua is eminently
satisfactory. The latter, looking lovely, but a little frightened,
so takes Lady Baring's artistic soul by storm, that that great lady
then and there accepts the situation, and asks Perpetua if she will
come to her for a week or so. Perpetua, charmed in turn by Lady
Baring's grace and beauty and pretty ways, receives the invitation
with pleasure, little dreaming that she is there "on view," as it
were, and that the invitation is to be prolonged indefinitely--that