e was already fairly
resolved it should. The three elders were most drolly provincial, to his
mind, and their accent was positively barbarous to his ears. Reuben was
less provincial to look at, but to Mr. De Blacquaire's critical eye the
young man was evidently not a gentleman. He had not heard him speak as
yet, but could well afford to make up his mind without that. Nobody but
a boof could have employed Reuben's tailor or his shoemaker. As for the
girl, she looked like a lily in a kitchen-garden, a flower among the
coarse and commonplace things of every-day consumption. It would be a
deadly pity, he thought, if she should have an accent like the rest.
Her dress was perfectly refined and simple, and Ferdinand guessed pretty
shrewdly that this was likely to be due to her own handiwork and fancy.

"What a delightful, quaint old garden you have here, to be sure," he
said.

With a perfect naturalness she raised a warning palm against him, and
at that instant the quartette party began their performance. She had
not even turned an eye in his direction, and he was a little piqued. The
hand which had motioned him to silence was laid now on the gnarled old
apple-tree, and she rested her ripe cheek against it. Her eyes began
to dream at the music, and it was evident that her forgetfulness of the
picturesque young gentleman beside her was complete and unaffected. The
picturesque young gentleman felt this rather keenly. The snub was small
enough, in all conscience, but it _was_ a snub, and he was sensitive,
even curiously sensitive, to that kind of thing. And he was not in the
habit of being snubbed. He was accustomed to look for the signs of his
own power to please among young women who moved in another sphere.

It was a very, very small affair, but then it is precisely these
very small affairs which rankle in a certain sort of mind. Ferdinand
dismissed it, but it spoiled his music for the first five minutes.

The Earl of Barfield was one of those people to whom music is neither
more nor less than noise. He loved quiet and hated noise, and the four
interpreters of the melody and harmony of Beethoven afforded him as much
delight as so many crying children would have done. It had been a joke
against him in his youth that he had once failed to distinguish between
"God save the King" and the "Old Hundredth." Harmony and melody
here were alike divine in themselves, and were more than respectably
rendered, and he sat and suffered und