"The reasoning of a chambermaid! Well, even if I had fallen in love with her, it would not be at first sight; for in seeing her tonight, I only see the figure of the picture in a new pose, with a change of drapery, in a different light. Perhaps I am in love with the ideal which the picture suggests; if so, I shall certainly be faithful to it, for the ideal never disappoints, and the real generally does so. Therefore I would rather avoid this young lady."

66

Ha, ha, ha! ho! he also hum!"

"If she were to fulfil the promise of the picture, it would be something like the story of Pygmalion and Galatea coming true. That is not a likely occurrence. No; were she never so charming, she would fail to reach the perfection which Sasso Ferrato has helped me to conceive. It would be impossible not to associate her real qualities with my ideal; and since, as I say, the real almost inevitably disappoints, my beautiful illusion would be dissipated and my idol shattered. I shall be careful not to come in contact with the young lady."

"Well, I am sure I have no objection; and, to tell you the truth, it just occurs to me that I may as well fall in love with her myself. I have not adventured in that line as yet; but I daresay I might succeed, because I am so 'adaptive,' as you call it; and there would be a dramatic propriety in being in love on Lake Como, which I am not insensible to. Besides, there's nothing else to do here but smoke and loll about on the lake; and I daresay both these occupations would gain by a flavour of the tender passion. Yes, Cosmo, consider me in love, until further instructions, and respect me accordingly no brusquerie, no roughness with the blossom which

now begins to expand before your eyes."

"You in love? You?"

"I-even I. You ought to be immensely obliged to me. You're out of the running, you know, and evidently developing into a bard. It will be a godsend to you to watch the affair. Besides, you will be of serious service in gooseberrypicking; and you are just the man to intriguer that combustible old gentleman-you're so 'adaptive' and many-sided,' don't you see?"

"Well, I can conceive many things, but not Tom Wyedale as the hero of a love-romance."

"Nothing happens but the improbable, my boy; and if there are a few deficiencies in my composition, you can idealise me, you know. With your talent, I think you ought to turn out of this material a very first-class sort of hero."

"Somehow I don't see it."
"Ah! you do us both injus-

tice."

tense, in speaking of your dunceship."

Hepatitis! hepatitis! Clouded vision, morbid fancies, noises in the head. We must have you overhauled. There is a manslayer in the hotel; consult him."

"Hang it, Tom, what a bore you are! I feel so tired of you sometimes, it appears to me a mystery how we are such friends."

"Candid friend! it is difficult to say how it should be so. The general rules are horribly contradictory. Like draws to like; but then, contrasts fascinate each other. Perhaps the endearing ties in this case are gratitude on your part, and a sense of protectorship on mine-continued from earliest youth until now."

"As how?"

"How? Why, who licked Jack Falls for bullying you?"

"I don't remember; probably I licked him myself."

"You! Why, Jack could have eaten you. Who supplied you with cricket-bats, like a brother?"

"No one did. I remember your giving me a bat for my silver chain and my white mouse that had one eye pink and the other green-but the handle of the bat turned out to be sprung."

"Well, hang it! I gave you back the mouse, although I was devoted to it."

'Yes, you gave it me back to avoid a swishing, when white mice were forbidden under penalties. And then, when the holidays came -although I had run the risk of keeping it all the half-you pretended you had only lent it to me, to oblige me, and wanted to take it back."

"Oh, I can't go back upon all these trumpery little details. I only remember that I was excessively generous to you about a mouse or mice and cricket-bats."

"Generous?"

"Yes; and then the verses." "I suppose you'll say next that you wrote mine for me?"

"By no means; that would have been a doubtful kindness. No; I frequently allowed you to write mine for me, which was glorious practice for a little fellow-upon my word, it was quite fatherly of me. And then that row about Mother Willet's orchard, when I saved you-and-and-these and a hundred other little kindnesses, I suppose, must have stamped themselves into the plastic nature of your youth, and have been confirmed in manhood by the sense of protection which an unpractical (shall I say a weaker?) nature derives from association with one which is practical and philosophically robust. That, I take it, is the explanation from your point of view; and from mine, it is, of course, not wonderful to find a generous spirit attaching itself to the object of its protection and generosity."

"And looking out watchfully, no doubt, for fresh opportunities of exercising these qualities?"

"Most distinctly. I will be true to my mission, Cosmo. Lean upon me; I won't desert you."

Now, Tom, you villain, I don't like this vein at all. I seem to remember similar flourishes in connection with certain financial embarrassments, which always ended in being rather embarrassing to myself. Upon my honour, now, I shouldn't be a bit surprised to find that there was a temporary, difficulty about a hotel bill, or a temporary but equally pressing necessity for two or three hundred pounds."

"My dear Cosmo, nor I! What intuitions the fellow has at times, to be sure! To tell you the truth, my banker is not a very good fellow." "No?"

"No, not at all. I may say I'm ashamed of him. He can never see more than one side of a question, and his view of that is limited and groovy. Now a banker ought not to be groovy; ought he?" "Perhaps not."

"No. Grooviness is inconsistent with the elevated intelligence which one has a right to expect in a banker. Just listen to a case in point. I"

Tom's statement, however, was interrupted by a shout from a boat at a little distance. The two friends had been rowed down near to the Isola di San Giovanni; there they had turned, and, after sweeping close in to the Bellagian shore, were now slowly heading for home. The boat which hailed was behind them, motionless, and no other boats were in the neighbourhood.

"They must be hailing us," said Cosmo.

"Tourists full of new wine," replied Tom. "Let them howl."

The shout was repeated. Cosmo was for returning. Something may be wrong," he said. "Let them rave. quoth Tom.

Avanti!"

Then, as they got under way again, the cry was repeated with such energy that it became clear that something was the matter; and they turned back. As they approached the boat, a sharp English voice upbraided them, in fierce, broken Italian, for their tardiness; but as they were all still under the shadow of the hills, the speaker was unrecognisable.

"Subito! subito !" replied old Pietro, leisurely paddling along.

"Subito! D--n it! do you call that subito?" cried the voice.

"Subito! subito! — pazienza! pazienza che va piano va lontano," said, or rather sang, the grinning boatman, as though soothing an impatient child; and then,

easing his oars as he ran alongside, "Eccoci, signore!"

"It is the 'beauté de diable' and her papa, as I am a living, loving sinner," whispered Tom. "How prompt is the arrow of Fate!"

"You are English gentlemen, I presume," said Lord Germistounefor it was he-"and I do think you might have been a little readier to answer my cry for assistance."

"But what is the matter, sir?" asked Tom.

"Matter, sir? Drowning's the matter-that's all." He then explained that the boatman had snapped one of his oars, and in jumping up to try to rescue the half which fell into the water, had sent "his great blundering foot through one of the rotten planks; and the boat's filling-that's all."

"We had no conception that there was anything seriously wrong,"

said Tom.

The old lord then tartly suggested transhipment instead of conversation. "If you will put us on shore anywhere at Bellaggio, we can get another boat. Our destination is Cadenabbia; but don't let us inconvenience you."

"Our way would be yours in any case," said Cosmo, addressing the lady; "but, as it happens, we also are bound for Cadenabbia."

The transhipment then took place, and the damaged boat was taken in tow, her boatman continuing in her, and indignantly denying any danger. Tom contrived to dispose the new guests so that he sat between the young lady and her father. And now he began to play off a little comedy for the amusement of his friend; and falling into the role which he had prescribed for himself in his farcical conversation a few minutes before, proceeded to dramatise the part of the "aspirant" who, in "sapping up to a position," makes almost as much

love to the lady's belongings as to herself. Cosmo, who knew the "devilry" of which his friend was capable, feared he might overdo the part. The gravity of his face and manner were, however, unimpeachable; and all his attentions, divided pretty equally between father and daughter, passed muster in the most creditable way. Cosmo was very far from approving of a joke of the sort, and he soon had fresh cause for disapproval and annoyance; for Tom, out of pure wantonness, began to drag his name in, in such a way as to throw discredit upon him, and in such a way as, antithetically, to suggest his own superior merit in all respects.

"I cannot," he said to the young lady, "sufficiently blame myself for not insisting on our immediate return. My friend is a little obstinate, but I ought to have combated him. He would have it that the cry came from some party of tourists who had been-had been-a

dining somewhere. The tone of voice ought to have been sufficient for him. To me it was unmistakably the cry of a gentleman in distress. I ought to have been firm with him."

This spirited perversion of facts brought Lord Germistoune into the field at once. "Your friend's scepticism," he said, with a very grim look at Cosmo, "might have had disastrous results for us. He might have been willing to give us the benefit of the doubt, I think."

Cosmo was about to reply, when the young lady interposed. "I am sure," she said, "that you came as quickly as possible. Papa, you are really too exigeant. The accident seems scarcely to have happened, and here we are, safe and sound, on board another boat. Papa is too exigeant," she continued, with a laugh, "but you must make allow ance for him. He has had a sad

chapter of accidents to-day. Have you not, papa a?"

"Accidents? I don't call them accidents," snorted the old lord; "downright, deliberate insolence and mismanagement-these are not accidents. Would you believe it, sir, I was made twenty-five minutes late for dinner to-day by false information?"

"Yes, I observed that you came in late for dinner," said Tom, in a voice of sweetest sympathy; "and I feared there had been some of the usual negligence. In fact, I think I said to my friend, 'Here is the old, old story again; it is really getting too insufferable.""

"Ah! you confirm me?"
"Indeed I do."

"And then, that head-waiter!" "Oh! he?-he is notoriously an impostor."

"And his insolence!" "Insolence! Now, I daresay he answered you?"

"Ah! that he did, and most improperly."

"There, Cosmo!" said Tom, turning to his friend with the air of a man who, after a protracted controversy, at length finds an argument which gives him the victory beyond dispute "there, Cosmo! I suppose you won't support your friend after that;" and then, before Cosmo had time to say anything-"to me, that man is the incarnation of stupid impertinence. If it had not been for my friend here, I would have brought the matter to a point long ago, by going frankly to the direction, and simply saying, 'Either that headwaiter is dismissed, or I leave the hotel.""

"Quite right-quite right!" cried the old gentleman; "and I'd have done it myself-I'd have done it myself. Then, they keep back the letters, and have no excuse to make. The porter—

"Oh, the porter! simply a cretin.”

"And what business have they to employ cretins ?"

"Part of the system-part of the system."

"So it would seem; and it's no better over here. I have just been over to the 'Serbellone' to look for rooms; and there, I protest to you, I was treated like-like a scavenger. I said the rooms smelt of rats. The manager denied this brusquely; said it had been the chateau of a grand seigneur, and couldn't smell of rats. I told him that I believed the walls were lined with dead rats; that the floors and the roofs were full of them; and that if there were no living ones there, it was simply because the house was crumbling to pieces with dry-rot, and going to fall. The manager then requested me to leave the premises-me-actually -in so many words, and stated that in no case should I have rooms. I gave him my name, which produced no sort of effect. I said I would expose him. He replied that that was my affair, and a matter of complete indifference to him; and I was, as nearly as possible, hustled out of the house. Now, did you ever hear anything half so monstrous?-did you ever? did you ever? did you ever? Eh? hum? what?"

Tom received this tale of wrong with immense sympathy, interjecting little groans of indignation at critical parts.

"I think," continued the old gentleman, "the whole place seems to have changed. Twenty years ago it was charming; but there is a sort of an infernal democratic twang about it now, that upsets me-upsets me. Don't you see a change?"

"Oh, certainly; nothing could be more marked," replied Tom, who had seen the lake for the first

time one week before. "It's all deteriorated sadly deteriorated," he added, with a comprehensive wave of his hand, which appeared to include the whole district, and even the lake and the sky, in the condemnation of being rat-eaten and of having a democratic twang.

The old gentleman was greatly mollified by all this sympathy'; but addressed himself exclusively to Tom, who had contrived, out of sheer wanton fun, to put his friend in the light of a malefactor.

"It is very disappointing," said the young lady; "we intended to enjoy ourselves so much here, and now all these contretemps have darkened our prospects."

"You are not disappointed in the beauty of the lake, I am sure?" said Cosmo, who had hitherto kept silence, and was now immediately rewarded by a furtive kick from his friend, meant to imply that he must not trespass on another man's preserves.

"No, indeed," was the reply; "I never, even in my dreams, saw anything half so lovely."

Tom made rather a floundering attempt to construct a gallant speech on these premisses, and the lady went on

"One could not say too much in its praise; or rather, perhaps, one cannot say too little. There are some things that seem to be above the power of words."

"Things that ought only to be painted, you mean," said Tom ; "and you are an artist, without

doubt?"