"Do neither!" said the host, abruptly. Then, turning away, he lighted
his candle, murmured a quick good-night, and disappeared through a side-
door which led to his own rooms.

Lionel looked round for Fairthorn, who now emerged /ab anqulo/ from his
nook.

"Oh, Mr. Fairthorn, how you have enchanted me! I never believed the
flute could have been capable of such effects!"

Mr. Fairthorn's grotesque face lighted up. He took off his spectacles,
as if the better to contemplate the face of his eulogist. "So you were
pleased! really?" he said, chuckling a strange, grim chuckle, deep in his
inmost self.

"Pleased! it is a cold word! Who would not be more than pleased?"

"You should hear me in the open air."

"Let me do so-to-morrow."

"My dear young sir, with all my heart. Hist!"--gazing round as if
haunted,--"I like you. I wish him to like you. Answer all his questions
as if you did not care how he turned you inside out. Never ask him a
question, as if you sought to know what he did not himself confide. So
there is some thing, you think, in a flute, after all? There are people
who prefer the fiddle."

"Then they never heard your flute, Mr. Fairthorn." The musician again
emitted his discordant chuckle, and, nodding his head nervously and