“No, and I don’t mean that.  But when he is silent, you can hardly help vaguely, though perhaps most unjustly, mistrusting him.  Take people whom you know and like.  Take any one you know and like.”

“Soon done, my good fellow,” said Wilding.  “I take you.”

“I didn’t bargain for that, or foresee it,” returned Vendale, laughing.  “However, take me.  Reflect for a moment.  Is your approving knowledge of my interesting face mainly founded (however various the momentary expressions it may include) on my face when I am silent?”

“I think it is,” said Wilding.

“I think so too.  Now, you see, when Obenreizer speaks—­in other words, when he is allowed to explain himself away—­he comes out right enough; but when he has not the opportunity of explaining himself away, he comes out rather wrong.  Therefore it is, that I say he does not keep silence well.  And passing hastily in review such faces as I know, and don’t trust, I am inclined to think, now I give my mind to it, that none of them keep silence well.”

This proposition in Physiognomy being new to Wilding, he was at first slow to admit it, until asking himself the question whether Mrs. Goldstraw kept silence well, and remembering that her face in repose decidedly invited trustfulness, he was as glad as men usually are to believe what they desire to believe.

But, as he was very slow to regain his spirits or his health, his partner, as another means of setting him up—­and perhaps also with contingent Obenreizer views—­reminded him of those musical schemes of his in connection with his family, and how a singing-class was to be formed in the house, and a Choir in a neighbouring church.  The class was established speedily, and, two or three of the people having already some musical knowledge, and singing tolerably, the Choir soon followed.  The latter was led, and chiefly taught, by Wilding himself:  who had hopes of converting his dependents into so many Foundlings, in respect of their capacity to sing sacred choruses.

Now, the Obenreizers being skilled musicians, it was easily brought to pass that they should be asked to join these musical unions.  Guardian and Ward consenting, or Guardian consenting for both, it was necessarily brought to pass that Vendale’s life became a life of absolute thraldom and enchantment.  For, in the mouldy Christopher-Wren church on Sundays, with its dearly beloved brethren assembled and met together, five-and-twenty strong, was not that Her voice that shot like light into the darkest places, thrilling the walls and pillars as though they were pieces of his heart!  What time, too, Madame Dor in a corner of the high pew, turning her back upon everybody and everything, could not fail to be Ritualistically right at some moment of the service; like the man whom the doctors recommended to get drunk once a month, and who, that he might not overlook it, got drunk every day.