We are friends, you will understand, she and I; capital friends, though sometimes," with a sigh, "she--she seems to disapprove of my mode of living.

But we get on very well on the whole.

She is a very good girl," says the professor kindly, who always thinks of Lady Baring as a little girl in short frocks in her nursery--the nursery he had occupied with her.
To hear the beautiful, courted, haughty Lady Baring, who has the best of London at her feet, called "a good girl," so tickles Mr.Hardinge, that he leans back in his chair and bursts out laughing.
"Yes ?" says the professor, as if asking for an explanation of the joke.
"Oh! nothing--nothing.

Only--you are such a queer fellow!" says Hardinge, sitting up again to look at him.

"You are a _rara avis_, do you know?
No, of course you don't! You are one of the few people who don't know their own worth.