"Sir Hastings!" Mr. Hardinge leans back in his chair and gives way to thought. This quiet, hard-working student--this man whom he had counted as a nobody--the brother of that disreputable Hastings Curzon! "As good as got the baronetcy," says he still thinking. "At the rate Sir Hastings is going he can't possibly last for another twelvemonth, and here is this fellow living in these dismal lodgings with twenty thousand a year before his eyes. A lucky thing for him that the estates are so strictly entailed. Good heavens! to think of a man with all that almost in his grasp being _happy_ in a coat that must have been built in the Ark, and caring for nothing on earth but the intestines of frogs and such-like abominations." "You seem surprised again," says the professor, somewhat satirically. "I confess it," says Hardinge. "I can't see why you should be." "_I_ do," says Hardinge drily. "That you," slowly, "_you_ should be Sir Hastings' brother! Why----" "No more!" interrupts the professor sharply. He lifts his hand. "Not another word. I know what you are going to say. It is one of my greatest troubles, that I always know what people are going to say when they mention him. Let him alone, Hardinge." "Oh! _I'll_ let him alone," says Hardinge, with a gesture of disgust. There is a pause. "You know my sister, then?" says the professor presently. "Yes. She is very charming. How is it I have never seen you there?" "At her house?" "At her receptions?" "I have no taste for that sort of thing, and no time. Fashionable society bores me. I go and see Gwen, on off days and early hours, when I am sure that I shall find her alone. We are friends, you will understand, she and I; capital friends, though sometimes," with a sigh, "she--she seems to disapprove of my mode of living. But we get on very well on the whole. She is a very good girl," says the professor kindly, who always thinks of Lady Baring as a little girl in short frocks in her nursery--the nursery he had occupied with her. To hear the beautiful, courted, haughty Lady Baring, who has the best of London at her feet, called "a good girl," so tickles Mr. Hardinge, that he leans back in his chair and bursts out laughing. "Yes?" says the professor, as if asking for an explanation of the joke. "Oh! nothing--nothing. Only--you are such a queer fellow!" says Hardinge, sitting up again to look at him. "You are a _rara avis_, do you know? No, of course you don't! You are one of the few people who don't know their own worth. I don't believe, Curzon, though I should live to be a thousand, that I shall ever look upon your like again." "And so you laugh. Well, no doubt it is a pleasant reflection," says the professor dismally. "I begin to wish now I had never seen myself." "Oh, come! cheer up," says Hardinge, "your pretty ward will be all right. If Lady Baring takes her in hand, she----" "Ah! But will she?" says the professor. "Will she like Per----Miss Wynter?"