fortune. He was satisfied of the fineness of her musical gift--it
had the touching note. The touching note was in her person as well.

The davenport was delightful, after six months of its tottering
predecessor, and such a re-enforcement to the young man's style was
not impaired by his sense of something lawless in the way it had been
gained. He had made the purchase in anticipation of the money he
expected from Mr. Locket, but Mr. Locket's liberality was to depend
on the ingenuity of his contributor, who now found himself confronted
with the consequence of a frivolous optimism. The fruit of his
labour presented, as he stared at it with his elbows on his desk, an
aspect uncompromising and incorruptible. It seemed to look up at him
reproachfully and to say, with its essential finish: "How could you
promise anything so base; how could you pass your word to mutilate
and dishonour me?" The alterations demanded by Mr. Locket were
impossible; the concessions to the platitude of his conception of the
public mind were degrading. The public mind!--as if the public HAD a
mind, or any principle of perception more discoverable than the stare
of huddled sheep! Peter Baron felt that it concerned him to
determine if he were only not clever enough or if he were simply not
abject enough to rewrite his story. He might in truth have had less
pride if he had had more skill, and more discretion if he had had
more practice. Humility, in the profession of letters, was half of
practice, and resignation was half of success. Poor Peter actually
flushed with pain as he recognised that this was not success, the
production of gelid prose which his editor could do nothing with on
the one side and he himself could do nothing with on the other. The
truth about his luckless tale was now the more bitter from his having
managed, for some days, to taste it as sweet.