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 under them in his young friend's behoof like a hero. They bored him unspeakably, and the performance lasted half an hour. When it was all over he beat his withered white hands together once or twice, and smiled in self-gratulation that his time of suffering was over. “Admirably rendered!” cried Ferdinand; “admirably--admirably rendered. Will you forgive me just a hint, sir?” He addressed Sennacherib. “A leetle more light and shade! A performance less level in tone.” “P'raps the young man'll show us how to do it,” said Sennacherib, in a dry, mock humility, handing his fiddle and bow towards the critic. The critic accepted them with a manner charmingly unconscious of the intended satire, and walked round the table until he came behind Reuben, when he turned back the music for a leaf or two. “Here, for example,” he said, and tucking the instrument beneath his chin, played through a score of bars with a certain exaggerated _chic_ which awakened Sennacherib's derision. “What dost want to writhe i' that fashion for?” he demanded. “Dost find thine inwards twisted? It's a pretty tone, though,” he allowed. “The young man can fiddle. Strikes me, young master, as thee'dst do better at the Hopera than the House o' Commons. Tek a fool's advice and try.” Ferdinand smiled with genuine good-humor. This insolent old personage began to amuse him.