e gallery found Felix
recumbent on a sofa, admiring the famous Hobbema.

"Don't interrupt me," he said peevishly, catching the servant in the act
of staring at him. "Put down the bottle and go!" Forbidden to look at
Mr. Sweetsir, the man's eyes as he left the gallery turned wonderingly
towards the famous landscape. And what did he see? He saw one towering
big cloud in the sky that threatened rain, two withered mahogany-colored
trees sorely in want of rain, a muddy road greatly the worse for rain,
and a vagabond boy running home who was afraid of the rain. That was the
picture, to the footman's eye. He took a gloomy view of the state of Mr.
Sweetsir's brains on his return to the servants' hall. "A slate loose,
poor devil!" That was the footman's report of the brilliant Felix.

Immediately on the servant's departure, the silence in the
picture-gallery was broken by voices penetrating into it from the
drawing-room. Felix rose to a sitting position on the sofa. He had
recognized the voice of Alfred Hardyman saying, "Don't disturb Lady
Lydiard," and the voice of Moody answering, "I will just knock at the
door of her Ladyship's room, sir; you will find Mr. Sweetsir in the
picture-gallery."

The curtains over the archway parted, and disclosed the figure of a tall
man, with a closely cropped head set a little stiffly on his shoulders.
The immovable gravity of face and manner which every Englishman seems to
acquire who lives constantly in the society of horses, was the gravity
which this gentleman displayed as he entered the picture-gallery. He was
a finely made, sinewy man, with clearly cut, regular features. If he had
not been affected with horses on the brain he would doubtless have been
personally popular with the women. As it was, the serene and hippic
gloom of the handsome horse-breeder daunted the daughters of Eve,
and they failed to make up their minds about the exact value of him,
socially considered. Alfred Hardyman was nevertheless a remarkable man
in his way. He had been offered the customary alternatives submitted
to the younger sons of the nobility--the Church or the diplomatic
service--and had refused the one and the other. "I like horses," he
said, "and I mean to get my living out of them. Don't talk to me about
my position in the world. Talk to my eldest brother, who gets the money
and the title." Starting in life with these sensible views, and with a
small capital of five thousand pounds, Hardyman took his ow