cabinet in ebony and silver, containing coins of all shapes and sizes,
set out in little drawers lined with dark purple velvet. One of these
drawers lay on the small table attached to his chair; and near it were
some tiny jeweller's brushes, a wash-leather "stump," and a little
bottle of liquid, all waiting to be used in various ways for the
removal of any accidental impurities which might be discovered on the
coins. His frail white fingers were listlessly toying with something
which looked, to my uninstructed eyes, like a dirty pewter medal with
ragged edges, when I advanced within a respectful distance of his
chair, and stopped to make my bow.

"So glad to possess you at Limmeridge, Mr. Hartright," he said in a
querulous, croaking voice, which combined, in anything but an agreeable
manner, a discordantly high tone with a drowsily languid utterance.
"Pray sit down. And don't trouble yourself to move the chair, please.
In the wretched state of my nerves, movement of any kind is exquisitely
painful to me. Have you seen your studio? Will it do?"

"I have just come from seeing the room, Mr. Fairlie; and I assure
you----"

He stopped me in the middle of the sentence, by closing his eyes, and
holding up one of his white hands imploringly. I paused in
astonishment; and the croaking voice honoured me with this explanation--

"Pray excuse me. But could you contrive to speak in a lower key? In
the wretched state of my nerves, loud sound of any kind is
indescribable torture to me. You will pardon an invalid? I only say to
you what the lamentable state of my health obliges me to say to
everybody. Yes. And you really like the room?"

"I could wish for nothing prettier and nothing more comfortable," I
answered, dropping my voice, and beginning to discover already that Mr.
Fairlie's selfish affectation and Mr. Fairlie's wretched nerves meant
one and the same thing.

"So glad. You will find your position here, Mr. Hartright, properly
recognised. There is none of the horrid English barbarity of feeling
about the social position of an artist in this house. So much of my
early life has been passed abroad, that I have quite cast my insular
skin in that respect. I wish I could say the same of the
gentry--detestable word, but I suppose I must use it--of the gentry in
the neighbourhood. They are sad Goths in Art, Mr. Hartright. People, I
do assure you, who would have opened their eyes in astonishment, if
they had seen C