ce your cook to
leave you. But bachelors always have the best of everything. Now tell
me about your visit to Germany. Which was the point where we
parted--Baireuth, wasn't it? I would not go to Baireuth with anybody!"

"I went with Mr. Falbe," said Michael.

"Ah, Mr. Falbe has not asked me yet. I may have to revise what I say,"
said Aunt Barbara daringly.

"I didn't ask Michael," said Hermann. "I got into his carriage as the
train was moving; and my luggage was left behind."

"I was left behind," said Sylvia, "which was worse. But I sent Hermann's
luggage."

"So expeditiously that it arrived the day before we left for Munich,"
remarked Hermann.

"And that's all the gratitude I get. But in the interval you lived upon
Lord Comber."

"I do still in the money I earn by giving him music lessons. Mike, have
you finished the Variations yet?"

"Variations--what are Variations?" asked Aunt Barbara.

"Yes, two days ago. Variations are all the things you think about on the
piano, Aunt Barbara, when you are playing a tune made by somebody else."

"Should I like them? Will Mr. Falbe play them to me?" asked she.

"I daresay he will if he can. But I thought you loathed music."

"It certainly depends on who makes it," said Aunt Barbara. "I don't like
ordinary music, because the person who made it doesn't matter to me.
But if, so to speak, it sounds like somebody I know, it is a different
matter."

Michael turned to Sylvia.

"I want to ask your leave for something I have already done," he said.

"And if I don't give it you?"

"Then I shan't tell you what it is."

Sylvia looked at him with her candid friendly eyes. Her brother always
told her that she never looked at anybody except her friends; if she was
engaged in conversation with a man she did not like, she looked at his
shirt-stud or at a point slightly above his head.

"Then, of course, I give in," she said. "I must give you leave if
otherwise I shan't know what you have done. But it's a mean trick. Tell
me at once."

"I've dedicated the Variations to you," he said.

Sylvia flushed with pleasure.

"Oh, but that's absolutely darling of you," she said. "Have you, really?
Do you mean it?"

"If you'll allow me."

"Allow you? Hermann, the Variations are mine. Isn't it too lovely?"

It was at this moment that Aunt Barbara happened to glance at Michael,
and it suddenly struck her that it was a perfectly new Michael whom she
looked at. She knew and was secre