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 know of what. It seems to me that my responsibility would begin only at the moment when it should appear that your daughter herself was in danger.'

'Oh, you needn't mind that; I'll take care of her.'

'If you think she is in danger already I'll take him away to-morrow,' I went on.

'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 am very well here; I like the place and the life and your society. Besides, it doesn't strike me that—on her side—there is anything.'

She looked at me with an expression that I had never seen in her face, and if I had puzzled her she repaid me in kind. 'You are very annoying; you don't deserve what I would do for you.'

What she would do for me she did not tell me that day, but we took up the subject again. I said to her that I did not really see why we should assume that a girl like Linda—brilliant enough to make one of the greatest matches—would fall into my nephew's arms. Might I inquire whether her mother had won a confession from her—whether she had stammered out her secret? Mrs. Pallant answered that they did not need to tell each other such things—they had not lived together twenty years in such intimacy for nothing. To this I rejoined 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 was not great; and I mentioned that Archie had not once spoken to me of the young lady, save to remark casually and rather patronisingly, after his first encounter with her, that