: I know her.«
    »Intimately?«
    »Quite as intimately as I wish.«
    »What have you done with her now?«
    »Am I her keeper?« I felt inclined to ask; but I simply answered, »I have
shaken her well, and would have shaken her better, but she escaped out of my
hands and ran away.«
    »Would you favour me,« he asked, »by watching over her this one evening, and
observing that she does nothing imprudent - does not, for instance, run out into
the night-air immediately after dancing?«
    »I may, perhaps, look after her a little, since you wish it; but she likes
her own way too well to submit readily to control.«
    »She is so young, so thoroughly artless,« said he.
    »To me she is an enigma,« I responded.
    »Is she?« he asked - much interested. »How?«
    »It would be difficult to say how - difficult, at least, to tell you how.«
    »And why me?«
    »I wonder she is not better pleased that you are so much her friend.«
    »But she has not the slightest idea how much I am her friend. That is
precisely the point I cannot teach her. May I inquire did she ever speak of me
to you?«
    »Under the name of Isidore she has talked about you often; but I must add
that it is only within the last ten minutes I have discovered that you and
Isidore are identical. It is only, Dr. John, within that brief space of time I
have learned that Ginevra Fanshawe is the person, under this roof, in whom you
have long been interested - that she is the magnet which attracts you to the Rue
Fossette, that for her sake you venture into this garden, and seek out caskets
dropped by rivals.«
    »You know all?«
    »I know so much.«
    »For more than a year I have been accustomed to meet her in society. Mrs.
Cholmondeley, her friend, is an acquaintance of mine; thus I see her every
Sunday. But you observed that under the name of Isidore she often spoke of me:
may I - without inviting you to a breach of confidence - inquire what was the
tone, what the feeling of her remarks? I feel somewhat anxious to know, being a
little tormented with uncertainty as to how I stand with her.«
    »Oh, she varies: she shifts and changes like the wind