own, or with some queer, sagacious old woman amongst his
cottagers, when he would have grudged a moment to a commonplace fine gentleman,
or to the most fashionable and elegant, if frivolous, lady. His preferences on
these points he carried to an extreme, forgetting that there may be amiable and
even admirable characters amongst those who cannot be original. Yet he made
exceptions to his own rule: there was a certain order of mind, plain, ingenuous,
neglecting refinement, almost devoid of intellectuality, and quite incapable of
appreciating what was intellectual in him; but which, at the same time, never
felt disgust at his rudeness, was not easily wounded by his sarcasm, did not
closely analyze his sayings, doings, or opinions; with which he was peculiarly
at ease, and, consequently, which he peculiarly preferred. He was lord amongst
such characters. They, while submitting implicitly to his influence, never
acknowledged, because they never reflected on, his superiority; they were quite
tractable, therefore, without running the smallest danger of being servile; and
their unthinking, easy, artless insensibility was as acceptable, because as
convenient to Mr. Yorke, as that of the chair he sat on, or of the floor he
trod.
    It will have been observed that he was not quite uncordial with Mr. Moore;
he had two or three reasons for entertaining a faint partiality to that
gentleman. It may sound odd, but the first of these was that Moore spoke English
with a foreign, and French with a perfectly pure accent; and that his dark, thin
face, with its fine though rather wasted lines, had a most anti-British and
anti-Yorkshire look. These points seem frivolous, unlikely to influence a
character like Yorke's; but, the fact is, they recalled old, perhaps pleasurable
associations: they brought back his travelling, his youthful days. He had seen,
amidst Italian cities and scenes, faces like Moore's; he had heard, in Parisian
cafés and theatres, voices like his; he was young then, and when he looked at,
and listened to the alien, he seemed young again.
    Secondly, he had known Moore's father, and had had dealings with him: that
was a more substantial, though by no means a more agreeable tie; for, as his
firm had been connected with Moore's in business, it had also, in some measure,
been implicated in its losses.
    Thirdly, he had found Robert himself a sharp man of business. He saw reason
to anticipate that he would in