So when we got back to our hotel after the baths that afternoon, the _concierge_ greeted us with: 'Well, your noble nephew has arrived, high-well-born countess! He came with his boxes just now, and has taken a room near your honourable ladyship's.' Lady Georgina's face was a study of mingled emotions. I don't know whether she looked more pleased or jealous. Later in the day, I chanced on Mr. Tillington, sunning himself on a bench in the hotel garden. He rose, and came up to me, as fast as his languid nature permitted. 'Oh, Miss Cayley,' he said, abruptly, 'I do want to thank you so much for not betraying me. I know you spotted me twice in the town yesterday; and I also know you were good enough to say nothing to my revered aunt about it.' 'I had no reason for wishing to hurt Lady Georgina's feelings,' I answered, with a permissible evasion. His countenance fell. 'I never thought of that,' he interposed, with one hand on his moustache. 'I-- I fancied you did it out of fellow-feeling.' 'We all think of things mainly from our own point of view first,' I answered. 'The difference is that some of us think of them from other people's afterwards. Motives are mixed.' He smiled. 'I didn't know my deeply venerated relative was coming here so soon,' he went on. 'I thought she wasn't expected till next week; my brother wrote me that she had quarrelled with her French maid, and 'twould take her full ten days to get another. I meant to clear out before she arrived. To tell you the truth, I was going to-morrow.' 'And now you are stopping on?' He caught my eye again. [Illustration: CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES, HE MURMURED.] 'Circumstances alter cases,' he murmured, with meaning. 'It is hardly polite to describe one as a circumstance,' I objected. 'I meant,' he said, quickly, 'my aunt alone is one thing; my aunt with a friend is quite another.' 'I see,' I answered. 'There is safety in numbers.' He eyed me hard. 'Are you mediaeval or modern?' he asked. 'Modern, I hope,' I replied. Then I looked at him again. 'Oxford?' He nodded. 'And you?' half joking. 'Cambridge,' I said, glad to catch him out. 'What college?' 'Merton. Yours?' 'Girton.' The odd rhyme amused him. Thenceforth we were friends--'two 'Varsity men,' he said. And indeed it does make a queer sort of link--a freemasonry to which even women are now admitted. At dinner and through the evening he talked a great deal to me, Lady Georgina putting in from time to time a characteristic growl about the _table-d'hote_ chicken--'a special breed, my dear, with eight drumsticks apiece'--or about the inadequate lighting of the heavy German _salon_. She was worse than ever: pungent as a rule, that evening she was grumpy. When we retired for the night, to my great surprise, she walked into my bedroom. She seated herself on my bed: I saw she had come to talk over Harold. 'He will be very rich, my dear, you know. A great catch in time. He will inherit all my brother's money.' 'Lord Kynaston's?'