"You ARE warning me," I cried, "but I hardly know of what! It seems to
me my responsibility would begin only at the moment your daughter
herself should seem in danger."

"Oh you needn't mind that--I'll take care of Linda."

But I went on. "If you think she's in danger already I'll carry him off
to-morrow."

"It would be the best thing you could do."

"I don't know--I should be very sorry to act on a false alarm. I'm very
well here; I like the place and the life and your society. Besides, it
doesn't strike me that--on her side--there's any real symptom."

She looked at me with an air I had never seen in her face, and if I had
puzzled her she repaid me in kind. "You're very annoying. You don't
deserve what I'd fain do for you."

What she'd fain do for me she didn't tell me that day, but we took up
the subject again. I remarked that I failed to see why we should assume
that a girl like Linda--brilliant enough to make one of the greatest--
would fall so very easily into my nephew's arms. Might I enquire if her
mother had won a confession from her, if she had stammered out her
secret? Mrs. Pallant made me, on this, the point that they had no need
to tell each other such things--they hadn't lived together twenty years
in such intimacy for nothing. To which I returned that I had guessed as
much, but that there might be an exception for a great occasion like the
present. If Linda had shown nothing it was a sign that for HER the
occasion wasn't great; and I mentioned that Archie had spoken to me of