rve in a garret, like poor
What's-his-name, don't you know?"

Lady Claridge sweetly agreed with her future son-in-law. So it befell
that shortly after this conversation Paul Vanderhoffen came to
Leamington Manor, and through an entire summer goaded young Percival
Claridge, then on the point of entering Cambridge, but pedagogically
branded as "deficient in mathematics," through many elaborate
combinations of x and y and cosines and hyperbolas.

Lady John Claridge, mother to the pupil, approved of the new tutor.
True, he talked much and wildishly; but literary men had a name for
eccentricity, and, besides, Lady Claridge always dealt with the
opinions of other people as matters of illimitable unimportance. This
baronet's lady, in short, was in these days vouchsafing to the universe
at large a fine and new benevolence, now that her daughter was safely
engaged to Lord Brudenel, who, whatever his other virtues, was
certainly a peer of England and very rich. It seems irrelevant, and
yet for the tale's sake is noteworthy, that any room which harbored
Lady John Claridge was through this fact converted into an absolute
monarchy.

And so, by the favor of Lady Claridge and destiny, the tutor stayed at
Leamington Manor all summer.

There was nothing in either the appearance or demeanor of the fiancee
of Lord Brudenel's title and superabundant wealth which any honest
gentleman could, hand upon his heart, describe as blatantly repulsive.

It may not be denied the tutor noted this. In fine, he fell in love
with Mildred Claridge after a thorough-going fashion such as Prince
Fribble would have found amusing. Prince Fribble would have smiled,
shrugged, drawled, "Eh, after all, the girl is handsome and deplorably
cold-blooded!" Paul Vanderhoffen said, "I am not fit to live in the
same world with her," and wrote many verses in the prevailing Oriental
style rich in allusions to roses, and bulbuls, and gazelles, and peris,
and minarets--which he sold rather profitably.

Meanwhile, far oversea, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Kesselberg had been
unwise enough to quarrel with his Chancellor, Georges Desmarets, an
invaluable man whose only faults were dishonesty and a too intimate
acquaintance with the circumstances of Prince Hilary's demise. As
fruit of this indiscretion, an inconsiderable tutor at Leamington
Manor--whom Lady John Claridge regarded as a sort of upper servant was
talking with a visitor.

The tutor, it appeared, prefe