"So you are to come to Switzerland with us next month, Ancram," said Miss Kilfinane. She was seated at the piano in Lady Seely's drawing-room, and Algernon was leaning on the instrument, and idly turning over a portfolio of music.

"Yes; I hope your serene highness has no objection to that arrangement?"

"It would be of no use my objecting, I suppose!"

"Of none whatever. But it would be unpleasant."

"Oh, you would still go then, whether I liked it or not?"

"I'm afraid the temptation to travel about Europe in your company would be too strong for me!"

"How silly you are, Ancram!" said Miss Kilfinane, looking up half shyly, half tenderly. But she met no answering look from Algernon. He had just come upon a song that he wanted to try, and was drawing it out from under a heap of others in the portfolio.

"Look here, Castalia," he said, "I wish you would play through this accompaniment for me. I can't manage it."

It will be seen that Algernon had become familiar enough with Miss Kilfinane to call her by her Christian-name. And, moreover, he addressed her in a little tone of authority, as being quite sure she would do what he asked her.

"This?" she said, taking the song from his hand. "Why do you want to sing this dull thing? I think Glück is so dreary! And, besides, it isn't your style at all."

"Isn't it? What is my style, I wonder?"

"Oh light, lively things are your style."

At the bottom of his mind, perhaps, Algernon thought so too. But it is often very unpleasant to hear our own secret convictions uttered by other people; and he did not like to be told that he could not sing anything more solid than a French chansonette.

"Lady Harriet particularly wishes me to try this thing of Glück's at her house next Saturday," he said.

Miss Kilfinane threw down the song pettishly. "Oh, Lady Harriet," she exclaimed. "I might have known it was her suggestion! She is so full of nonsense about her classical composers. I think she makes a fool of you, Ancram. I know it will be a failure if you attempt that song."

"Thank you very much, Miss Kilfinane! And now, having spoken your mind on the subject, will you kindly play the accompaniment?"

Algernon picked up the piece of music, smoothed it with his hand, placed it on the desk of the piano, and made a little mocking bow to Castalia. His serenity and good humour seemed to irritate her. "I'm sick of Lady Harriet!" she said, querulously, and with a shrug of the shoulders. The action and the words were so plainly indicative of ill temper, that Lady Seely, who waddled into the drawing-room at that moment, asked loudly, "What are you two quarrelling about, eh?"

"Oh, what a shocking idea, my lady! We're not quarrelling at all," answered Algernon, raising his eyebrows, and smiling with closed lips. He rarely showed his teeth when he smiled, which circumstance gave his mouth an expression of finesse and delicate irony that was peculiar, and—coupled with the candidly-arched brows—attractive.

"Well, it takes two to make a quarrel, certainly," returned my lady. "But Castalia was scolding you, at all events. Weren't you now, Castalia?"

Castalia deigned not to reply, but tossed her head, and began to run her fingers over the keys of the piano.

"The fact is, Lady Seely," said Algernon, "that Castalia is so convinced that I shall make a mess of this aria—which Lady Harriet Dormer has asked me to sing for her next Saturday—that she declines to play the accompaniment of it for me."

"Well, you ought to be immensely flattered, young jackanapes! She wouldn't care a straw about some people's failures, would you, Castalia? Would you mind, now, if Jack Price were to sing a song and make an awful mess of it, eh?"

"As to that, it seems to me that Jack Price makes an awful mess of most things he does," replied Castalia.

"Ah, exactly! So one mess more or less don't matter. But in the case of our Admirable Crichton here, it is different."

"I think he is getting awfully spoiled," said Castalia, a little less crossly. And there was absolutely a blush upon her sallow cheek.

"And that's the reason you snub him, is it? You see, Ancram, it's all for your good, if Castalia is a little hard on you!"

Miss Kilfinane rose and left the room, saying that she must dress for her drive.

"I think Castalia is harder on Lady Harriet than on me," said Algernon, when Castalia was gone.

"Ah! H'm! Castalia has lots of good points, but—I daresay you have noticed it—she is given to being a little bit jealous when she cares about people. Now you show a decided liking for Lady Harriet's society, and you crack up her grace, and her elegance, and her taste, and all that. And sometimes I think poor Cassy don't quite like it, don't you know?"

"What on earth can it matter to her?" cried Algernon. He knew that Castalia was no favourite with my lady, and he flattered himself that he was becoming a favourite with her. So he spoke with a little half-contemptuous smile, and a shrug of impatience, when he asked, "What on earth can it matter to her?"

But my lady did not smile. She threw her head back, and looked at Algernon from under her half-closed eyelids.

"It's my opinion, young man, that it matters a good deal to Castalia," she said; "more than it would have mattered to me when I was a young lady, I can tell you. But there's no accounting for tastes."

Then Lady Seely also left the room, having first bidden Algernon to come and dine with her the next day.

Algernon was dumfoundered.

Not that he had not perceived the scornful Castalia's partiality for his charming self; not that her submission to his wishes, or even his whims, and her jealous anxiety to keep him by her side whenever there appeared to be danger of his leaving it for the company of a younger or more attractive woman, had escaped his observation. But Algernon was not fatuous enough to consider himself a lady-killer. His native good taste would alone have prevented him from having any such pretension. It was ridiculous; and it involved, almost of necessity, some affectation. And Algernon never was affected. He accepted Castalia's marked preference as the most natural thing in the world. He had been used to be petted and preferred all his life. But it truly had not entered into his head that the preference meant anything more than that Castalia found him amusing, and clever, and good-looking, and that she liked to keep so attractive a personage to herself as much as possible. For Algernon had noted the Honourable Castalia's little grudging jealousies, and he knew as well as anybody that she did not like to hear him praise Lady Harriet, for whom, indeed, she had long entertained a smouldering sort of dislike. But that she should have anything like a tender sentiment for himself, and, still more, that Lady Seely should see and approve it—for my lady's words and manner implied no less—was a very astonishing idea indeed.

So astonishing was it, that after a while he came to the conclusion that the idea was erroneous. He turned Lady Seely's words in his mind, this way and that, and tried to look at them from all points of view, and—as words will do when too curiously scrutinised—they gradually seemed to take another and a different meaning, from the first obvious one which had struck him.

"The old woman was only giving me a hint not to annoy Miss Kilfinane; not to excite her peevish temper, or exasperate her envy."

But this solution would not quite do, either. "Lady Seely is not too fond of Castalia," he said to himself. "Besides, I never knew her particularly anxious to spare anyone's feelings. What the deuce did she mean, I wonder?"

Algernon continued to wonder at intervals all the rest of the afternoon. His mind was still busy with the same subject when he came upon Jack Price, seated in the reading-room of the club, to which he had introduced Algernon at the beginning of his London career, and of which Algernon had since become a member. It was now full summer time. The window was wide open, and the Honourable John Patrick was lounging in a chair near it, with a newspaper spread out on his knees, and his eyes fixed on a water-cart that was be-sprinkling the dusty street outside. He looked very idle, and a little melancholy, as he sat there by himself, and he welcomed Algernon with even more than his usual effusion, asking him what he was going to do with himself, and offering to walk part of the way towards his lodgings with him, when he was told that Algernon must betake himself homeward. The offer was a measure of Mr. Price's previous weariness of spirit; for, in general, he professed to dislike walking.

"And how long is it since you saw our friend, Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs?" asked Jack Price of Algernon, as they strolled along, arm-in-arm, on the shady side of the way.

"Oh—I'm afraid it's rather a long time," said Algernon, carelessly.

"Ah, now that's bad, my dear boy. You shouldn't neglect people, you know. And our dear Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs is exceedingly pleasant."

"As to neglecting her—I don't know that I have neglected her—particularly. What more could I do than call and leave my card?"

"Call again. You wouldn't leave off going to Lady Seely's because you happened not to find her at home once in a way."

"Lady Seely is my relation."

"H'm! Well, would you cut Lady Harriet Dormer for the same reason?"

"Cut her? But, my dear Mr. Price, you mustn't suppose that I have cut Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs!"

"Come, now, my dear fellow, I'm a great deal older than you are, and I'll take the liberty of giving you a bit of advice. Never offend people, who mean to be civil, merely because they don't happen to amuse you. What, the deuce, we can't live for amusement in this life!"

The moralising might be good, but the moralist was, Algernon thought, badly fitted with his part. He was tempted to retort on his new mentor, but he did not retort. He merely said, quietly:

"Has Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs been complaining of me, then?"

"Well, the truth is, she has—in an indirect kind of way; you know—what?"

"I'll go and see her this evening. To-day is Thursday, isn't it? She has one of her 'At home's' this evening."

Jack Price looked at the young man admiringly. "You're an uncommonly sensible fellow!" said he. "I give you my honour I never knew a fellow of your years take advice so well. By Jove! I wish I had had your common sense when I was your age. It's too late for me to do any good now, you know, what? And, in fact," (with a solemn lowering of his musical Irish voice) "I split myself on the very rock I'm now warning you off. I never was polite. And if any one told me to go to the right, sure it was a thousand to one that I'd instantly bolt to the left!" And shaking his head with a sad, regretful gesture, Jack Price parted from Algernon at the corner of the street.

Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs received the truant very graciously that evening. She knew that, during his absence from her parties, he had been admitted into society, to which even her fashionable self could not hope to penetrate. But, though this might be a reason for a little genteel sneering at him behind his back, it was none whatever, Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs considered, for giving him a cool reception when he did grace her house with his presence. She said to several of her guests, one after the other: "We have young Ancram Errington here to-night. He's so glad to come to us, poor fellow, for my people's place is his second home, down in the West of England. And, then, the Seelys think it nice of us to take notice of him, don't you know? He is a rel............