"And meanwhile Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim?"

"Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim, and behaving himself, as I hear from his
poor mother." Fontenoy sighed. "But the boy was frightened, of course,
when they went abroad. Now she is getting better, and one can't tell--"

"No, one can't tell," said George.

"I wish I knew what the thing really _meant_," said Fontenoy, presently,
in a tone of perplexed reverie. "What do you think? Is it a passion--?"

"Or a pose?"

George pondered.

"H'm," he said at last--"more of a pose, I think, than a passion. Ancoats
always seems to me the _jeune premier_ in his own play. He sees his life
in scenes, and plays them according to all the rules."

"Intolerable!" said Fontenoy, in exasperation. "And at least he might
refrain from dragging a girl into it! We weren't saints in my day, but we
weren't in the habit of choosing well-brought-up maidens of twenty in our
own set for our confidantes. You know, I suppose, what broke up the party
at Castle Luton?"

"Ancoats told me nothing. I have heard some gossip from Harding Watton,"
said George, unwillingly. It was one of his strongest characteristics,
this fastidious and even haughty dislike of chatter about other people's
private affairs, a dislike which, in the present case, had been