“Good heavens, Hepzibah! what horrible disturbance have we now in the house?” cried he, wreaking his resentful impatience — as a matter of course, and a custom of old — on the one person in the world that loved him.

“I have never heard such a hateful clamor! Why do you permit it? In the name of all dissonance, what can it be?”

It was very remarkable into what prominent relief — even as if a dim picture should leap suddenly from its canvas — Clifford’s character was thrown by this apparently trifling annoyance. The secret was, that an individual of his temper can always be pricked more acutely through his sense of the beautiful and harmonious than through his heart. It is even possible — for similar cases have often happened