Perpetua, charmed in turn by Lady Baring's grace and beauty and pretty ways, receives the invitation with pleasure, little dreaming that she is there "on view," as it were, and that the invitation is to be prolonged indefinitely--that is, till either she or her hostess tire one of the other.
The professor's heart sinks a little as he sees his sister rise and loosen the laces round the girl's pretty, slender throat, begging her to begin to feel at home at once.

Alas! He has deliberately given up his ward! _His_ ward! Is she any longer his?
Has not the great world claimed her now, and presently will she not belong to it?
So lovely, so sweet she is, will not all men run to snatch the prize ?--a prize, bejewelled too, not only by Nature, but by that gross material charm that men call wealth.

Well, well, he has done his best for her.

There was, indeed, nothing else left to do..