his tone? "As we are on the
subject of myself, I may as well tell you that my brother is Sir
Hastings Curzon, of whom"--he turns back as if to take up some imaginary
article from the floor--"you may have heard."

"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 professo