"I see no reason why she shouldn't be," says the professor
calmly--is there a faint suspicion of hauteur in 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----"