There had been many tutors and only twice long residence at schools in Vevey and for a winter in Budapest.

The health she too sedulously watched she was fast destroying, and her son was at the time of her death a thin, pallid, undersized boy, who disliked even the mild sports of French lads, and had been flattered and considered until he had acquired the conviction that he was an important member of an important family.

His other mother--nature--had given him, happily, better traits.

He was an observer, a born lover of books, intelligent, truthful, and trained in the gentle, somewhat formal, manners of an older person.

Now for the first time in his guarded life he was alone on a railway journey in charge of the conductor.