Willie Prime was red and yellow.

"Blue? Oh: you mean his cheeks?"

"Yes. But he's a handsome gentleman all the same; and you should have seen his luggage! Such a dressing-bag--cost fifty pounds, I daresay."

"Oh, dear, me," said Agatha, "Yes, Nettie, I shall go the day after to-morrow."

"Mr. Merceron asked to be introduced to me," said Nettie proudly. "And he asked where you were--he said he'd seen you at the window."

"Did he?" said Agatha negligently; and Nettie, finding the conversation flag, retired to her own room.

Agatha sat a moment longer on the bed.

"What a very deceitful young man," she exclaimed at last. "I must be a very strict secret indeed. Well, I suppose I should be."

CHAPTER IV

A CATASTROPHE AT THE POOL

Mr. Vansittart Merceron was not quite sure that Victor Sutton had any business to call him "Merceron." He was nearly twenty years older than Victor, and a man of considerable position; nor was he, as some middle-aged men are, flattered by the implication of contemporaneousness carried by the mode of address. But it is hard to give a hint to a man who has no inkling that there is room for one; and when Mr. Vansittart addressed Victor as 'Mr. Sutton' the latter graciously told him to "hang the Mister." Reciprocity was inevitable, and the elder man asked himself, with a sardonic grin, how soon he would be "Van."

"Coming to bathe, Merceron?" he heard under his window at eight o'clock the next morning. "We're off to the Pool."

Mr. Vansittart shouted an emphatic negative, and the two young fellows started off by themselves. Charlie's manner was affected by the ceremonious courtesy which a well-bred host betrays towards a guest not very well-beloved, but Victor did not notice this. It seldom occurred to him that people did not like him.

"Yes," he was saying, "I'm just twenty-nine. I've had my fling, Charlie, and now I shall get to business."

Charlie was relieved to find that according to this reckoning he had several more years 'fling' before him.

"Next year," pursued Victor, "I shall marry; then I shall go into Parliament, and then I shall go ahead."

"I didn't know you were engaged."

"No, I'm not, but I'm going to be. I can please myself, you see; I've got lots of coin."

"Oh, yes, but can you please the lady?" asked Charlie.

"My dear boy," began Victor, "when you've seen a little more of the world----

"Here we are," said Charlie. "Why, hullo! Who's that?"

A dripping head and a blowing mouth were visible in the middle of the Pool.

"Willie Prime by Jove! 'Morning Willie;" and Charlie set about flinging off his flannels, Victor following his example in a more leisurely fashion.

Willie Prime was a little puzzled to know how he ought to treat Charlie. 'Charlie' he had been in very old days--then Master Charlie (that was Willie's mother's doing)--then Mr. Charles. But now Willie had set up for himself. He had played billiards with a lord, and football against the Sybarites, and, incidentally, hobn.o.bbed with quite great people. It is not very easy to a.s.sert a social position when one has nothing on, and only one's head out of water, but Willie did it.

"Good-morning--er--Merceron," said he.

Victor heard him, and put up his eyegla.s.s in amazement; but he, in his turn, had only a shirt on, and the hauteur was a failure. Charlie utterly failed to notice the incident.

"Is it cold?" he shouted.

"Beastly," answered Willie. The man who has got in always tells the man who is going to get in that it is "beastly cold."

"Here goes!" cried Charlie; and a minute later he was treading water by Willie's side.

"Miss Wallace all fit?" he asked.

"Thank you, yes, she's all right."

"And her friend?"

"All right, I believe."

"And when is it to be, old fellow?"

"Soon as I get a rise."

"What?" asked the unsophisticated Charlie, who knew the phrase chiefly in connection with fish.

"A rise of screw, you know."

"Oh, ah, yes--what a fool I am!" and Charlie disappeared beneath the waves.

When they were all on the bank, drying, Willie, encouraged by not being discouraged (save by Sutton's silence) in his advances, ventured further, and asked in a joking tone:

"And aren't you marked off yet? We've been expecting to hear of it for the last twelve months."

"What do you mean'?"

"Why, you and Miss Bush.e.l.l."

Charlie struggled through his shirt, and then answered, with his first touch of distance:

"Nothing in it. People've got no business to gossip."

"It's d.a.m.ned impertinent," observed Victor Sutton in slow and deliberate tones.

Willie flushed.

"I beg pardon," he said gruffly. "I only repeated what I heard."

"My dear fellow, no harm's done," cried Charlie. "Who was the fool?"