And then--how if your pupil begins to talk round the subject and to wander into other things?
You cannot very well talk round a branch of mathematics, but heraldry is a subject surrounded by fields, meadows, and lawns, so to speak, all covered with beautiful flowers.

Into these the pupil wandered, and Iris not unwillingly followed.

Thus the teaching of heraldry by correspondence became the most delightful interchange of letters imaginable, set off and enriched with a curious and strange piquancy, derived from the fact that one of them, supposed to be an elderly man, was a young girl, ignorant of the world except from books, and the advice given her by two old men, who formed all her society.

Then, as was natural, what was at first a kind of play, became before long a serious and earnest confidence on the one side, and a hesitating reception on the other.
Latterly he more than once amused himself by drawing an imaginary portrait of her; it was a pleasing portrait, but it made her feel uneasy.
"I know you," he said, "from your letters, but yet I want to know you in person.

I think you are a man advanced in years." Poor Iris! and she not yet twenty-one.