e we were hobnobbing over the
tea-table as if we were cronies."

Westray was astonished. Mr Sharnall had rebuked him so short a time
before for not having repulsed Lord Blandamer's advances that he could
scarcely understand such a serious falling away from all the higher
principles of hatred and malice as were implied in this tea-drinking.
His experience of life had been as yet too limited to convince him that
most enmities and antipathies, being theoretical rather than actual, are
apt to become mitigated, or to disappear altogether on personal
contact--that it is, in fact, exceedingly hard to keep hatred at
concert-pitch, or to be consistently rude to a person face to face who
has a pleasant manner and a desire to conciliate.

Perhaps Mr Sharnall read Westray's surprise in his face, for he went on
with a still more apologetic manner:

"That is not the worst of it; he has put me in a most awkward position.
I must admit that I found his conversation amusing enough. We spoke a
good deal of music, and he showed a surprising knowledge of the subject,
and a correct taste; I do not know where he has got it from."

"I found exactly the same thing with his architecture," Westray said.
"We started to go round the minster as master and pupil, but before we
finished I had an uncomfortable impression that he knew more about it
than I did--at least, from the archaeologic point of view."

"Ah!" said the organist, with that indifference with which a person who
wishes to recount his own experiences listens to those of someone else,
however thrilling they may be. "Well, his taste was singularly refined.
He showed a good acquaintance with the contrapuntists of the last
century, and knew several of my own works. A very curious thing this.
He said he had been in some cathedral--I forget which--heard the
service, and been so struck with it that he went afterwards to look it
up on the bill, and found it was Sharnall in D flat. He hadn't the
least idea that it was mine till we began to talk. I haven't had that
service by me for years; I wrote it at Oxford for the Gibbons' prize; it
has a fugal movement in the _Gloria_, ending with a tonic pedal-point
that you would like. I must look it up."

"Yes, I should like to hear it," Westray said, more to fill the interval
while the speaker took breath than from any great interest in the
matter.

"So you shall--so you shall," went on the organist; "you will find the
pedal-point adds imme