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164 cleverness I admit, behaves as if the new age were already here. Well, that may be a very dangerous mistake both for her and for you.... This affair, if it goes on for a few days more, may involve very serious consequences indeed, with which I, for one, do not wish to be involved.”

Sir Richmond, upon the hearthrug, had a curious feeling that he was back in the head master’s study at Caxton.

Dr. Martineau went on with a lucidity that Sir Richmond found rather trying, to give his impression of Miss Grammont and her position in life.

“She is,” he said, “manifestly a very expensively educated girl. And in many ways—interesting. I have been watching her. I have not been favoured with very much of her attention, but that fact has enabled me to see her in profile. Miss Seyffert is a fairly crude mixture of frankness, insincerity and self-explanatory egotism, and I have been able to disregard a considerable amount of the conversation she has addressed to me. Now I guess this Miss Grammont has had no mother since she was quite little.”

“Your guesses, doctor, are apt to be pretty good,” said Sir Richmond.

“You know that?”

“She has told me as much.”

“H’m. Well—— She impressed me as having the air of a girl who has had to solve many problems for which the normal mother provides ready-