black--black always--severe, cold--but _now!_

It is to him as though he had seen her for the first time. The
graceful curves of her neck, her snowy arms, the dead white of the
gown against the whiter glory of the soft bosom, the large, dark
eyes so full of feeling, the little dainty head! Are they _all_
new--or some sweet, fresher memory of a picture well beloved?

Then he had seen his brother!--Hastings--the disgrace, the _roué_--
and bending over _her!..._ There had been that little movement, and
the girl's calm drawing back, and----

The professor's step forward at that moment had betrayed him to
Perpetua.

She rises now, letting her fan fall without thought to the ground.

"You!" cries she, in a little, soft, quick way. _"You!"_ Indeed it
seems to her impossible that it can be he.

She almost runs to him. If she had quite understood Sir Hastings is
impossible to know, for no one has ever asked her since, but
certainly the advent of her guardian is a relief to her.

"You!" she says again, as if only half believing. Her gaze grows
bewildered. If he had never seen her in anything but black before,
she had never seen him in aught but rather antiquated morning
clothes. Is this really the professor? Her eyes ask the question
anxiously. This tall, aristocratic, perfectly appointed man; this
man who looks positively _young_. Where are the glasses that until