Budsey announced “Mrs. Belding and Miss Halice,” and Farnham hastened to greet them.

If Sam Sleeny had few happy hours to enjoy, he could at least boast himself that one was beginning now.  The lovely face bore to his heart not only the blessing of its own beauty, but also a new and infinitely consoling thought.  He had imagined till this moment, in all seriousness, that Maud Matchin was the prettiest woman in the world, and that therefore all men who saw her were his rivals, the chief of whom was Farnham.  But now he reflected, with a joyful surprise, that in this world of rich people there were others equally beautiful, and that here, under Farnham’s roof, on terms of familiar acquaintance with him, was a girl as faultless as an angel,—­one of his own kind.  “Why, of course,” he said to himself, with a candid and happy self-contempt, “that’s his girl—­you dunderheaded fool—­what are you botherin’ about?”

He took a delight which he could not express in listening to the conversation of these friends and neighbors.  The ladies had come over, in pursuance of an invitation of Farnham’s, to see the additions which had recently arrived from Europe to his collection of bronzes and pottery, and some little pictures he had bought at the English water-color exhibition.  As they walked about the rooms, expressing their admiration of the profusion of pretty things which filled the cabinets and encumbered the tables, in words equally pretty and profuse, Sleeny listened to their voices as if it were music played to cheer him at his work.  He knew nothing of the things they were talking about, but their tones were gentle and playful; the young lady’s voice was especially sweet and friendly.  He had never heard such voices before; they are exceptional everywhere in America, and particularly in our lake country, where the late springs develop fine high sopranos, but leave much to be desired in the talking tones of women.  Alice Belding had been taught to use her fine voice as it deserved and Cordelia’s intonations could not have been more “soft, gentle, and low,—­an excellent thing in woman.”

After awhile, the voices came nearer, and he heard Farnham say: 

“Come in here a moment, please, and see my new netsukes; I got them at a funny little shop in Ostend.  It was on a Sunday afternoon, and the man of the house was keeping the shop, and I should have got a great bargain out of him, but his wife came in before we were through, and scolded him for an imbecile and sent him into the back room to tend the baby, and made me pay twice what he had asked for my little monsters.”

By this time they were all in the library, and the young lady was laughing, not loudly, but musically, and Mrs. Belding was saying: 

“Served you right for shopping on Sunday.  But they are adorable little images, for all that.”

“Yes,” said Farnham, “so the woman told me, and she added that they were authentic of the twelfth century.  I asked her if she could not throw off a century or two in consideration of the hard, times, and she laughed, and said I blagued, and honestly she didn’t know how old they were, but it was drole, tout de meme, qu’on put adorer un petit bon Dieu d’une laideur pareille.”