: she
seemed to possess a world-wide circulation. I don't know whether it was
this constant suggestion of hers that I was stalking her nephew which
roused my latent human feeling of opposition; but in the end, I began to
be aware that I rather liked the supercilious _attache_ than otherwise.
He evidently liked me, and he tried to meet me. Whenever he spoke to me,
indeed, it was without the superciliousness which marked his manner
towards others; in point of fact, it was with graceful deference. He
watched for me on the stairs, in the garden, by the terrace; whenever he
got a chance, he sidled over and talked to me. Sometimes he stopped in
to read me Heine: he also introduced me to select portions of Gabriele
d'Annunzio. It is feminine to be touched by such obvious attention; I
confess, before long, I grew to like Mr. Harold Tillington.

The closer he followed me up, the more did I perceive that Lady Georgina
threw out acrid hints with increasing spleen about the ways of
adventuresses. They were hints of that acrimonious generalised kind,
too, which one cannot answer back without seeming to admit that the cap
has fitted. It was atrocious how middle-class young women nowadays ran
after young men of birth and fortune. A girl would stoop to anything in
order to catch five hundred thousand. Guileless youths should be thrown
among their natural equals. It was a mistake to let them see too much of
people of a lower rank who consider themselves good-looking. And the
clever ones were the worst: they pretended to go in for intellectual
companionship.

I also noticed that though at first Lady Georgina had expressed the
strongest disinclination to my leaving her after the time originally
proposed, she now began to take for granted that I would go at the end
of my week, as arranged in London, and she even went on to some overt
steps towards securing the help of the blameless Gretchen.

We had arrived at Schlangenbad on Tuesday. I was to stop with the
Cantankerous Old Lady till the corresponding day of the following week.
On the Sunday, I wandered out on the wooded hillside behind the village;
and as I mounted the path I was dimly aware by a sort of instinct that
Harold Tillington was following me.

He came up with me at last near a ledge of rock. 'How fast you walk!' he
exclaimed. 'I gave you only a few minutes' start, and yet even my long
legs have had hard work to overtake you.'

'I am a fairly good climber,' I answered, sitt