Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/356

Rh left school, nothing was more natural than that she should continue some of her studies under Professor Balloure's guidance. And this was the ostensible pretext under shelter of which there continued an amount of intimacy which would have been otherwise inadmissible. But that it was partly a pretext, and that the intimacy was for Susan an undesirable one, Mrs. Lawton had come to feel most decidedly; and there had been several earnest conversations between them on the subject. The most baffling thing to Mrs. Lawton in these conversations was the utter impossibility of making Susan comprehend what was objected to. She simply could not understand. Professor Balloure had been her teacher; he was her teacher still; he was forty and she was eighteen; and above all he was a married man, and to Susan's mind there was something absurd as well as indelicate in any suggestion that there could be harm either to her or to him in their friendship.

"Why, I should as soon think of your objecting to an intimacy between me and papa, if he were alive," said Susan, vehemently; "if I ever could have had an intimacy with papa," she added, sadly. "Papa was only forty when he died; he would only be as much older than Professor Balloure, now, as you are than I; there 's no real difference of age between you and me."

At such times as this, poor Mrs. Lawton always fell back hopelessly on the assertion that Susan