critics went raving mad. Even in his dealings with his friends, the chorus girls, there was a certain touch of humour which made it impossible even for the most straightlaced to say hard things of him. In a word, Nicholas Kenyon was a very dangerous man. His influence was as subtly bad and pernicious as a beautifully made cigarette heavily charged with dope; and he would at any time if necessary have stolen his mother's toilet set in order to provide himself with caviar, plover's eggs and a small bottle of champagne. And this was the man who had shared rooms with Peter Guthrie during his terms at Oxford, and of whom the Doctor spoke that first night of his stay at the Randolph Hotel as an unusually charming person whom it was a pleasure to meet. In fact, he was the sole topic of conversation in all the bedrooms of Peter's family party before the lights were turned out. Mrs. Guthrie said, as she sat in front of the dressing-table combing her hair: "How lucky it is, dear, that Peter has found such a wonderful friend here! He is so English and so refined--in every sense of the word a gentleman." The Doctor thoroughly agreed with her and made a mental note to invite Kenyon to his house in New York in the autumn. Belle Guthrie took her brushes into Betty's room, which was next to her own, and looking extremely attractive in a pale pink kimono, with her dark hair all about her shoulders and her naked feet in pink, heel-less slippers, gave a ripple of excited laughter and confided to her friend that she was going to have a more bully time even than she had hoped. "I love St. John's College," she said, "and these wonderful old streets and all the church bells which strike so frequently--but I'm perfectly crazy about Nicholas Kenyon. He is so,--so different--so witty--says such perfectly wonderful things--and oh, my dear! _did_ you see the way he looked at me when he said 'good-night'?" Betty shook her head--her little golden head--her rather wise little head. "I didn't look," she said. "The light was shining on Peter's face, and that was good enough for me." What Graham thought of Kenyon came out in Peter's rooms, to which he had gone back with his brother when the family were left at the hotel after their return from a jaunt on the river in the moonlight after dinner,--the quiet, soothing, narrow stream on which they had floated in punts all among cushions and listened with keen appreciation to the throbbing song of the nightingale and the deep voice of an undergraduate singing "Annie Laurie" in the back water to the thrumming accompaniment of a mandolin.