Jack Price looked at the young man admiringly. "You're an uncommonly sensible fellow!" said he. "I give you my honour I never knew a fellow of your years take advice so well. By Jove! I wish I had had your common sense when I was your age. It's too late for me to do any good now, you know, what? And, in fact," (with a solemn lowering of his musical Irish voice) "I split myself on the very rock I'm now warning you off. I never was polite. And if any one told me to go to the right, sure it was a thousand to one that I'd instantly bolt to the left!" And shaking his head with a sad, regretful gesture, Jack Price parted from Algernon at the corner of the street. Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs received the truant very graciously that evening. She knew that, during his absence from her parties, he had been admitted into society, to which even her fashionable self could not hope to penetrate. But, though this might be a reason for a little genteel sneering at him behind his back, it was none whatever, Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs considered, for giving him a cool reception when he did grace her house with his presence. She said to several of her guests, one after the other: "We have young Ancram Errington here to-night. He's so glad to come to us, poor fellow, for my people's place is his second home, down in the West of England. And, then, the Seelys think it nice of us to take notice of him, don't you know? He is a relation of Lady Seely's, and is quite in that set--the Dormers, and all those people. Ah! you don't know them? They say he is to marry Castalia Kilfinane. But we haven't spoken about it yet out of our own little circle. Her father was Viscount Kauldkail, and married Lord Seely's youngest sister," and so on, and so on with a set smile, and no expression whatever on her smooth, fair face. To Algernon himself she showed herself politely inquisitive on the subject of his engagement to Castalia, and startled him considerably by saying, when she found herself close to him for a few minutes near a doorway: "And are we really to congratulate you, Mr. Errington?" "If you please, madam," answered Algernon, with a bright, amused smile and an easy bow, "but I should like to know--if it be not indiscreet--on what special subject? I am, indeed, to be congratulated on finding myself here. But, then, you are hardly likely to be the person to do it."