"Yes, I did, for I considered it my duty."
"Then you would like me to leave you, Professor? You would like me to write to my mother and explain all the circumstances to her, and beg and implore of her to take me away?"
"You must please yourself, Rosamund," said the Professor; and now he rose and in his turn laid his hand on her shoulder. "You have a generous heart, I can see. But you have never been subjected to the rigorous laws of self-control. You showed a sad want of self-control when you disobeyed me to-day, and again I perceive it breaking out. If you cannot obey me, Rosamund, you must go. Yes, I shall be sorry to have to say it, but you must go."
"And does that mean," said Rosamund, "that I am not to see Irene, that I am not to try to help her, that I am not to be a friend to Lady Jane, that my mother's wishes in this matter are to be disregarded?"
"It means," said the Professor very gravely, "that, for the present at least, you are to have nothing whatever to do with Irene Ashleigh—nothing whatever to do with her. You understand that, Rosamund. And I give you a week, my dear, to decide. Think over the advantages of this home. Think what it means to your friends, and will eventually mean to yourself, and try to discover that I am wise in my generation, although you doubtless consider me foolish. If at the end of the week you have found out that you cannot really obey me—or, rather, that you will not—I shall have, reluctantly, to write to your mother and ask her to remove you, for the other girls cannot be contaminated with that most fatal of all sins, the sin of direct disobedience."
Rosamund bowed her head. The tears she could not repress brimmed to her eyes. Suddenly she flung off the Professor's detaining hand.
"Oh, you are hard!" she said. "Is no one to help a girl who will soon become irreclaimable? Why, already I have an influence over her."
But the Professor did not answer.
"Give yourself a week," he said after a long pause; "then come to me again with your resolution."
She was about to leave the room when he again laid his hand on her arm.