At the same time, it moved him to a curious contempt of the youth.

He had to conjure-up an image of the young man in person, to correct the sentiment:--and it remained as a kind of bruise only half cured.
Mr.Dudley Sowerby was not one of the youths whose presence would rectify such an abstract estimate of the genus pursuer.

He now came frequently of an evening, to practise a duet for flutes with Victor;--a Mercadante, honeyed and flowing; too honeyed to suit a style that, as Fenellan characterized it to Nataly, went through the music somewhat like an inquisitive tourist in a foreign town, conscientious to get to the end of the work of pleasure; until the notes had become familiar, when it rather resembled a constable's walk along the midnight streets into collision with a garlanded roysterer; and the man of order and the man of passion, true to the measure though they were, seeming to dissent, almost to wrangle, in their different ways of winding out the melody, on to the last movement; which was plainly a question between home to the strayed reveller's quarters or off to the lockup.

Victor was altogether the younger of the two.

But his vehement accompaniment was a tutorship; Mr.Sowerby improved; it was admitted by Nesta and mademoiselle that he gained a show of feeling; he had learnt that feeling was wanted.