"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
great 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.