As he sat alone in his room, thinking with a natural melancholy that he had seen the sun set for the last time on his student life, and reflecting on the possibilities of the future and perhaps on opportunities wasted in the past, the memory of that evening last June recurred strongly to his imagination, and he felt an irresistible impulse to play once more the "Areopagita." He unlocked the now familiar cupboard and took out the violin, and never had the exquisite gradations of colour in its varnish appeared to greater advantage than in the soft mellow light of the fading day.

As he began the _Gagliarda_ he looked at the wicker chair, half expecting to see a form he well knew seated in it; but nothing of the kind ensued, and he concluded the "Areopagita" without the occurrence of any unusual phenomenon.
It was just at its close that he heard some one knocking at the outer door.

He hurriedly locked away the violin and opened the "oak." It was Mr.Gaskell.He came in rather awkwardly, as though not sure whether he would be welcomed.
"Johnnie," he began, and stopped.
The force of ancient habit sometimes, dear nephew, leads us unwittingly to accost those who were once our friends by a familiar or nick-name long "after the intimacy that formerly justified it has vanished.

But sometimes we intentionally revert to the use of such a name, not wishing to proclaim openly, as it were, by a more formal address that we are no longer the friends we once were.

I think this latter was the case with Mr.Gaskell as he repeated the familiar name.
"Johnnie, I was passing down New College Lane, and heard the violin from your open windows.