as reprehensible as a taste for cards or a fancy for a chorus girl.
Those are vices at least that belong to our century and to civilisation,
but a flute is nothing less than a relic of barbarism."

"Well, it's worse on me than on anyone else," said Laura, with the
dominant spirit which caused Mr. Payne to shiver whenever she tilted
against his wife. "My room is just above, and I get the benefit of every
note."

The tune issuing from the library had changed suddenly into "The Land o'
the Leal," and by the lamp light Uncle Percival could be seen, warm and
red and breathless but still blissfully fluting to the sleeping Mr.
Bleeker, whose face, fallen back against the velvet cushions, wore a
broad, beatific smile.

"He gets his happiness from it at least," persisted Laura. "I suppose
it's a part of his life just as poetry is a part of mine, and to be
happy at eighty-two one is obliged to be happy in an antedated fashion."

Then, as the two aunts swept from the room to join Angela, Laura seated
herself at Mr. Payne's side and caught the hand which he outstretched.
Of all the family he had been her favourite since childhood, and she
sometimes told herself that he was the only one who knew her as she
really was--who had ever penetrated behind her vivid outside armour of
personality. He was a man of great unsatisfied tenderness, who indulged
a secret charity as another man might have indulged a vicious taste. All
his inclinations strained after goodness, and had he possessed the
courage to follow the natural bent of his nature toward perfection he
might have found his happiness in the peaceful paths of exalted virtue.
But the constant dropping of cynicism will extinguish an angel, and,