“I can’t⁠—I daren’t⁠—I forget myself when I mention it.” She spoke loudly and almost fiercely, raised her clenched hand in the air, and shook it passionately; then, on a sudden, controlled herself again, and added, in tones lowered to a whisper “Tell me which of them you know.”

I could hardly refuse to humour her in such a trifle, and I mentioned three names. Two, the names of fathers of families whose daughters I taught; one, the name of a bachelor who had once taken me a cruise in his yacht, to make sketches for him.

“Ah! you don’t know him,” she said, with a sigh of relief. “Are you a man of rank and title yourself?”

“Far from it. I am only a drawing-master.”

As the reply passed my lips⁠—a little bitterly, perhaps⁠—she took my arm with the abruptness which characterised all her actions.