On approaching nearer to him, I discovered that he was not so entirely without occupation as I had at first supposed.  Placed amid the other rare and beautiful objects on a large round table near him, was a dwarf cabinet in ebony and silver, containing coins of all shapes and sizes, set out in little drawers lined with dark purple velvet.  One of these drawers lay on the small table attached to his chair; and near it were some tiny jeweller’s brushes, a wash-leather “stump,” and a little bottle of liquid, all waiting to be used in various ways for the removal of any accidental impurities which might be discovered on the coins.  His frail white fingers were listlessly toying with something which looked, to my uninstructed eyes, like a dirty pewter medal with ragged edges, when I advanced within a respectful distance of his chair, and stopped to make my bow.

“So glad to possess you at Limmeridge, Mr. Hartright,” he said in a querulous, croaking voice, which combined, in anything but an agreeable manner, a discordantly high tone with a drowsily languid utterance.  “Pray sit down.  And don’t trouble yourself to move the chair, please.  In the wretched state of my nerves, movement of any kind is exquisitely painful to me.  Have you seen your studio?  Will it do?”

“I have just come from seeing the room, Mr. Fairlie; and I assure you——­”

He stopped me in the middle of the sentence, by closing his eyes, and holding up one of his white hands imploringly.  I paused in astonishment; and the croaking voice honoured me with this explanation—­

“Pray excuse me.  But could you contrive to speak in a lower key?  In the wretched state of my nerves, loud sound of any kind is indescribable torture to me.  You will pardon an invalid?  I only say to you what the lamentable state of my health obliges me to say to everybody.  Yes.  And you really like the room?”

“I could wish for nothing prettier and nothing more comfortable,” I answered, dropping my voice, and beginning to discover already that Mr. Fairlie’s selfish affectation and Mr. Fairlie’s wretched nerves meant one and the same thing.

“So glad.  You will find your position here, Mr. Hartright, properly recognised.  There is none of the horrid English barbarity of feeling about the social position of an artist in this house.  So much of my early life has been passed abroad, that I have quite cast my insular skin in that respect.  I wish I could say the same of the gentry—­detestable word, but I suppose I must use it—­of the gentry in the neighbourhood.  They are sad Goths in Art, Mr. Hartright.  People, I do assure you, who would have opened their eyes in astonishment, if they had seen Charles the Fifth pick up Titian’s brush for him.  Do you mind putting this tray of coins back in the cabinet, and giving me the next one to it?  In the wretched state of my nerves, exertion of any kind is unspeakably disagreeable to me.  Yes.  Thank you.”