He had had full range of the pastures, and the harness galled him. Yet logically he could not find aught of fault in this smooth courtesy and tone of appreciation. It so became even a quasi-employer, though conscious of his magnanimity and sense of _noblesse oblige_. The fact that Desmond had grown gradually aware that Mr. Stanlett was but basking in the reflection of his niece’s splendors, and, although having some indeterminate income of his own, was content to spend the evening of his days in her embellished entourage, scarcely mitigated his secret displeasure. He felt that the old gentleman assumed a patronage which he had no right to exercise. Yet this resentment was inconsistent with his own theory that mere money had no title to homage from him. Thus Mr. Stanlett’s patronage, poor, should not have been less acceptable than Mr. Stanlett’s patronage, rich. Mrs. Faurie had not hastened to make Desmond welcome, but indeed he had been in the house only for an hour or so, and Mr. Stanlett’s urbanity was surely expansive enough to atone. He gave the newcomer his choice of excuses in Mrs. Faurie’s behalf: first the fatigue of a long drive, and again he mentioned a sore throat as her reason for not joining the group at the dinner-table. “She will see you later in the evening,” Mr. Stanlett promised. If the lady did not choose to appear at her own board for any reason which might seem to her good and sufficient, Desmond was in no position to cavil, but the old gentleman’s inadvertences in the matter gave him an impression of insincerity about the methods of the household which grated on his exacting and sensitive mood. Even the manners of the domestics, smooth, and deft, and obsequious in the extreme, were incongruous with the veiled scorn of the stranger, as a man of scant means, which he subtly detected in their eyes, for, the servitors of wealth and large pretensions, they had slight toleration of poverty out of their own rank of life. He perceived, too, the relish which Joel, the antiquated negro butler, took in the elaboration of the details of the daily dinner service, especially the old-fashioned custom of removing the cloth with each successive course, which was so deftly accomplished, revealing the fresh one spread below, that it seemed a prandial miracle. Mr. Stanlett, however, apologized in some sort. “We keep up the old style, you see. My niece says she despairs of ever inducing Joel to condescend to one cloth for the table at dinner, though she brought some very fancy centrepieces and such gimcracks from Paris expressly to stimulate his ambition for novelty.”