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.
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