“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?”

“Sure to,” said Hardinge, with quite a touch of enthusiasm. “’To see her is to love her, and love but’——­”

“That is of no consequence where anyone is concerned except Lady Baring,” says the professor, with a little twist in his chair, “and my sister has not seen her as yet.  And besides, that is not the only question—­a greater one remains.”

“By Jove! you don’t say so!  What?” demands Mr. Hardinge, growing earnest.

“Will Miss Wynter like her?" says the professor.  “That is the real point.”

“Oh!  I see!” says Hardinge thoughtfully.

The next day, however, proves the professor’s fears vain in both quarters.  An early visit to Lady Baring, and an anxious appeal, brings out all that delightful woman’s best qualities.  One stipulation alone she makes, that she may see the young heiress before finally committing herself to chaperone her safely through the remainder of the season.

The professor, filled with hope, hies back to his rooms, calls for Mrs. Mulcahy, tells her he is going to take his ward out for a drive, and gives that worthy and now intensely interested landlady full directions to see that Miss Wynter looks—­“er—­nice! you know, Mrs. Mulcahy, her best suit, and——­”