26. ETHELBERTA’S DRAWING-ROOM

While Ethelberta during the next few days was dismissing that evening journey from her consideration, as an incident altogether foreign to the organized course of her existence, the hidden fruit thereof was rounding to maturity in a species unforeseen.

Inferences unassailable as processes, are, nevertheless, to be suspected, from the almost certain deficiency of particulars on some side or other.  The truth in relation to Neigh’s supposed frigidity was brought before her at the end of the following week, when Dan and Sol had taken Picotee, Cornelia, and the young children to Kew for the afternoon.

Early that morning, hours before it was necessary, there had been such a chatter of preparation in the house as was seldom heard there.  Sunday hats and bonnets had been retrimmed with such cunning that it would have taken a milliner’s apprentice at least to discover that any thread in them was not quite new.  There was an anxious peep through the blind at the sky at daybreak by Georgina and Myrtle, and the perplexity of these rural children was great at the weather-signs of the town, where atmospheric effects had nothing to do with clouds, and fair days and foul came apparently quite by chance.  Punctually at the hour appointed two friendly human shadows descended across the kitchen window, followed by Sol and Dan, much to the relief of the children’s apprehensions that they might forget the day.

The brothers were by this time acquiring something of the airs and manners of London workmen; they were less spontaneous and more comparative; less genial, but smarter; in obedience to the usual law by which the emotion that takes the form of humour in country workmen becomes transmuted to irony among the same order in town.  But the fixed and dogged fidelity to one another under apparent coolness, by which this family was distinguished, remained unshaken in these members as in all the rest, leading them to select the children as companions in their holiday in preference to casual acquaintance.  At last they were ready, and departed, and Ethelberta, after chatting with her mother awhile, proceeded to her personal duties.

The house was very silent that day, Gwendoline and Joey being the only ones left below stairs.  Ethelberta was wishing that she had thrown off her state and gone to Kew to have an hour of childhood over again in a romp with the others, when she was startled by the announcement of a male visitor—none other than Mr. Neigh.

Ethelberta’s attitude on receipt of this information sufficiently expressed a revived sense that the incidence of Mr. Neigh on her path might have a meaning after all.  Neigh had certainly said he was going to marry her, and now here he was come to her house—just as if he meant to do it forthwith.  She had mentally discarded him; yet she felt a shock which was scarcely painful, and a dread which was almost exhilarating.  Her flying visit to Farnfield she thought little of at this moment.  From the fact that the mind prefers imaginings to recapitulation, conjecture to history, Ethelberta had dwelt more upon Neigh’s possible plans and anticipations than upon the incidents of her evening journey; and the former assumed a more distinct shape in her mind’s eye than anything on the visible side of the curtain.

Neigh was perhaps not quite so placidly nonchalant as in ordinary; still, he was by far the most trying visitor that Ethelberta had lately faced, and she could not get above the stage—not a very high one for the mistress of a house—of feeling her personality to be inconveniently in the way of his eyes.  He had somewhat the bearing of a man who was going to do without any fuss what gushing people would call a philanthropic action.

‘I have been intending to write a line to you,’ said Neigh; ‘but I felt that I could not be sure of writing my meaning in a way which might please you.  I am not bright at a letter—never was.  The question I mean is one that I hope you will be disposed to answer favourably, even though I may show the awkwardness of a fellow-person who has never put such a question before.  Will you give me a word of encouragement—just a hope that I may not be unacceptable as a husband to you?  Your talents are very great; and of course I know that I have nothing at all in that way.  Still people are happy together sometimes in spite of such things.  Will you say “Yes,” and settle it now?’

‘I was not expecting you had come upon such an errand as this,’ said she, looking up a little, but mostly looking down.  ‘I cannot say what you wish, Mr. Neigh.

‘Perhaps I have been too sudden and presumptuous.  Yes, I know I have been that.  However, directly I saw you I felt that nobody ever came so near my idea of what is desirable in a lady, and it occurred to me that only one obstacle should stand in the way of the natural results, which obstacle would be your refusal.  In common kindness consider.  I daresay I am judged to be a man of inattentive habits—I know that’s what you think of me; but under your influence I should be very different; so pray do not let your dislike to little matters influence you.’

‘I would not indeed.  But believe me there can be no discussion of marriage between us,’ said Ethelberta decisively.

‘If that’s the case I may as well say no more.  To burden you with my regrets would be out of place, I suppose,’ said Neigh, looking calmly out of the window.

‘Apart from personal feeling, there are considerations which would prevent what you contemplated,’ she murmured.  ‘My affairs are too lengthy, intricate, and unpleasant for me to explain to anybody at present.  And that would be a necessary first step.’

‘Not at all.  I cannot think that preliminary to be necessary at all.  I would put my lawyer in communication with yours, and we would leave the rest to them: I believe that is the proper way.  You could say anything in confidence to your family-man; and you could inquire through him anything you might wish to know about my—about me.  All you would need to say to myself are just the two little words—“I will,” in the church here at the end of the Crescent.’

‘I am sorry to pain you, Mr. Neigh—so sorry,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘But I cannot say them.’  She was rather distressed that, despite her discouraging words, he still went on with his purpose, as if he imagined what she so distinctly said to be no bar, but rather a stimulant, usual under the circumstances.

‘It does not matter about paining me,’ said Neigh.  ‘Don’t take that into consideration at all.  But I did not expect you to leave me so entirely without help—to refuse me absolutely as far as words go—after what you did.  If it had not been for that I should never have ventured to call.  I might otherwise have supposed your interest to be fixed in another quarter; but your acting in that manner encouraged me to think you could listen to a word.’

‘What do you allude to?’ said Ethelberta.  ‘How have I acted?’

Neigh appeared reluctant to go any further; but the allusion soon became sufficiently clear.  ‘I wish my little place at Farnfield had been worthier of you,’ he said brusquely.  ‘However, that’s a matter of time only.  It is useless to build a house there yet.  I wish I had known that you would be looking over it at that time of the evening.  A single word, when we were talking about it the other day, that you were going to be in the neighbourhood, would have been sufficient.  Nothing could have given me so much delight as to have driven you round.’

He knew that she had been to Farnfield: that knowledge was what had inspired him to call upon her to-day!  Ethelberta breathed a sort of exclamation, not right out, but stealthily, like a parson’s damn.  Her face did not change, since a face must be said not to change while it preserves the same pleasant lines in the mobile parts as before; but anybody who has preserved his pleasant lines under the half-minute’s peer of the invidious camera, and found what a wizened, starched kind of thing they stiffen to towards the end of the time, will understand the tendency of Ethelberta’s lovely features now.

‘Yes; I walked round,’ said Ethelberta faintly.

Neigh was decidedly master of the position at last; but he spoke as if he did not value that.  His knowledge had furnished him with grounds for calling upon her, and he hastened to undeceive her from supposing that he could think ill of any motive of hers which gave him those desirable grounds.

‘I supposed you, by that, to give some little thought to me occasionally,’ he resumed, in the same slow and orderly tone.  ‘How could I help thinking so?  It was your doing that which encouraged me.  Now, was it not natural—I put it to you?’

Ethelberta was almost exasperated at perceiving the awful extent to which she had compromised herself with this man by her impulsive visit.  Lightly and philosophically as he seemed to take it—as a thing, in short, which every woman would do by nature unless hindered by difficulties—it was no trifle to her as long as he was ignorant of her justification; and this she determined that he should know at once, at all hazards.

‘It was through you in the first place that I did look into your grounds!’ she said excitedly.  ‘It was your presumption that caused me to go there.  I should not have thought of such a thing else.  If you had not said what you did say I never should have thought of you or Farnfield either—Farnfield might have been in Kamtschatka for all I cared.’

‘I hope sincerely that I never said anything to disturb you?’

‘Yes, you did—not to me, but to somebody,’ said Ethelberta, with her eyes over-full of retained tears.

‘What have I said to somebody that can be in the least objectionable to you?’ inquired Neigh, with much concern.

‘You said—you said, you meant to marry me—just as if I had no voice in the matter!  And that annoyed me, and made me go there out of curiosity.’

Neigh changed colour a little.  ‘Well, I did say it: I own that I said it,’ he replied at last.  Probably he knew enough of her nature not to feel long disconcerted by her disclosure, however she might have become possessed of the information.  The explanation was certainly a great excuse to her curiosity; but if Ethelberta had tried she could not have given him a better ground for making light of her objections to his suit.  ‘I felt that I must marry you, that we were predestined to marry ages ago, and I feel it still!’ he continued, with listless ardour.  ‘You seem to regret your interest in Farnfield; but to me it is a charm, and has been ever since I heard of it.’

‘If you only knew all!’ she said helplessly, showing, without perceiving it, an unnecessary humility in the remark, since there was no more reason just then that she should go into details about her life than that he should about his.  But melancholy and mistaken thoughts of herself as a counterfeit had brought her to this.

‘I do not wish to know more,’ said Neigh.

‘And would you marry any woman off-hand, without being thoroughly acquainted with her circumstances?’ she said, looking at him curiously, and with a little admiration, for his unconscionably phlegmatic treatment of her motives in going to Farnfield had a not unbecoming daring about it in Ethelberta’s eye.

‘I would marry a woman off-hand when that woman is you.  I would make you mine this moment did I dare; or, to speak with absolute accuracy, within twenty-four hours.  Do assent to it, dear Mrs. Petherwin, and let me be sure of you for ever.  I’ll drive to Doctors’ Commons this minute, and meet you to-morrow morning at nine in the church just below.  It is a simple impulse, but I would adhere to it in the coolest moment.  Shall it be arranged in that way, instead of our waiting through the ordinary routine of preparation?  I am not a youth now, but I can see the bliss of such an act as that, and the contemptible nature of methodical proceedings beside it!’

He had taken her hand.  Ethelberta gave it a subtle movement backwards to imply that he was not to retain the prize, and said, ‘One whose inner life is almost unknown to you, and whom you have scarcely seen except at other people’s houses!’

‘We know each other far better than we may think at first,’ said Neigh.  ‘We are not people to love in a hurry, and I have not done so in this case.  As for worldly circumstances, the most important items in a marriage contract are the persons themselves, and, as far as I am concerned, if I get a lady fair and wise I care for nothing further.  I know you are beautiful, for all London owns it; I know you are talented, for I have read your poetry and heard your romances; and I know you are politic and discreet—’

‘For I have examined your property,’ said she, with a weak smile.

Neigh bowed.  ‘And what more can I wish to know?  Come, shall it be?’

‘Certainly not to-morrow.’

‘I would be entirely in your hands in that matter.  I will not urge you to be precipitate—I could not expect you to be ready yet.  My suddenness perhaps offended you; but, having thought deeply of this bright possibility, I was apt to forget the forbearance that one ought to show at first in mentioning it.  If I have done wrong forgive me.’

‘I will think of that,’ said Ethelberta, with a cooler manner.  ‘But seriously, all these words are nothing to the purpose.  I must remark that I prize your friendship, but it is not for me to marry now.  You have convinced me of your goodness of heart and freedom from unworthy suspicions; let that be enough.  The best way in which I in my turn can convince you of my goodness of heart is by asking you to see me in private no more.’

‘And do you refuse to think of me as ---.  Why do you treat me like that, after all?’ said Neigh, surprised at this want of harmony with his principle that one convert to matrimony could always find a second ready-made.

‘I cannot explain, I cannot explain,’ said she, impatiently.  ‘I would and I would not—explain I mean, not marry.  I don’t love anybody, and I have no heart left for beginning.  It is only honest in me to tell you that I am interested in watching another man’s career, though that is not to the point either, for no close relationship with him is contemplated.  But I do not wish to speak of this any more.  Do not press me to it.’

‘Certainly I will not,’ said Neigh, seeing that she was distressed and sorrowful.  ‘But do consider me and my wishes; I have a right to ask it for it is only asking a continuance of what you have already begun to do.  To-morrow I believe I shall have the happiness of seeing you again.’

She did not say no, and long after the door had closed upon him she remained fixed in thought.  ‘How can he be blamed for his manner,’ she said, ‘after knowing what I did!’

Ethelberta as she sat felt herself much less a Petherwin than a Chickerel, much less a poetess richly freighted with fancy than an adventuress with a nebulous prospect.  Neigh was one of the few men whose presence seemed to attenuate her dignity in some mysterious way to its very least proportions; and that act of espial, which had so quickly and inexplicably come to his knowledge, helped his influence still more.  She knew little of the nature of the town bachelor; there were opaque depths in him which her thoughts had never definitely plumbed.  Notwithstanding her exaltation to the atmosphere of the Petherwin family, Ethelberta was very far from having the thoroughbred London woman’s knowledge of sets, grades, coteries, cliques, forms, glosses, and niceties, particularly on the masculine side.  Setting the years from her infancy to her first look into town against those linking that epoch with the present, the former period covered not only the greater time, but contained the mass of her most vivid impressions of life and its ways.  But in recognizing her ignorance of the ratio between words to women and deeds to women in the ethical code of the bachelor of the club, she forgot that human nature in the gross differs little with situation, and that a gift which, if the germs were lacking, no amount of training in clubs and coteries could supply, was mother-wit like her own.

27. MRS. BELMAINE’S—CRIPPLEGATE CHURCH

Neigh’s remark that he believed he should see Ethelberta again the next day referred to a contemplated pilgrimage of an unusual sort which had been arranged for that day by Mrs. Belmaine upon the ground of an incidental suggestion of Ethelberta’s.  One afternoon in the week previous they had been chatting over tea at the house of the former lady, Neigh being present as a casual caller, when the conversation was directed upon Milton by somebody opening a volume of the poet’s works that lay on a table near.

‘Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee—’

said Mrs. Belmaine with the degree of flippancy which is considered correct for immortal verse, the Bible, God, etc., in these days.  And Ethelberta replied, lit up by a quick remembrance, ‘It is a good time to talk of Milton; for I have been much impressed by reading the “Life;” and I have decided to go and see his tomb.  Could we not all go?  We ought to quicken our memories of the great, and of where they lie, by such a visit occasionally.’

‘We ought,’ said Mrs. Belmaine.

‘And why shouldn’t we?’ continued Ethelberta, with interest.

‘To Westminster Abbey?’ said Mr. Belmaine, a common man of thirty, younger than his wife, who had lately come into the room.

‘No; to where he lies comparatively alone—Cripplegate Church.’

‘I always thought that Milton was buried in Poet’s Corner,’ said Mr. Belmaine.

‘So did I,’ said Neigh; ‘but I have such an indifferent head for places that my thinking goes for nothing.’

‘Well, it would be a pretty thing to do,’ said Mrs. Belmaine, ‘and instructive to all of us.  If Mrs. Petherwin would like to go, I should.  We can take you in the carriage and call round for Mrs. Doncastle on our way, and set you both down again coming back.’

‘That would be excellent,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘There is nowhere I like going to so much as the depths of the city.  The absurd narrowness of world-renowned streets is so surprising—so crooked and shady as they are too, and full of the quaint smells of old cupboards and cellars.  Walking through one of them reminds me of being at the bottom of some crevasse or gorge, the proper surface of the globe being the tops of the houses.’

‘You will come to take care of us, John?  And you, Mr. Neigh, would like to come?  We will tell Mr. Ladywell that he may join us if he cares to,’ said Mrs. Belmaine.

‘O yes,’ said her husband quietly; and Neigh said he should like nothing better, after a faint aspect of apprehension at the remoteness of the idea from the daily track of his thoughts.  Mr. Belmaine observing this, and mistaking it for an indication that Neigh had been dragged into the party against his will by his over-hasty wife, arranged that Neigh should go independently and meet them there at the hour named if he chose to do so, to give him an opportunity of staying away.  Ethelberta also was by this time doubting if she had not been too eager with her proposal.  To go on such a sentimental errand might be thought by her friends to be simply troublesome, their adherence having been given only in the regular course of complaisance.  She was still comparatively an outsider here, her life with Lady Petherwin having been passed chiefly in alternations between English watering-places and continental towns.  However, it was too late now to muse on this, and it may be added that from first to last Ethelberta never discovered from the Belmaines whether her proposal had been an infliction or a charm, so perfectly were they practised in sustaining that complete divorce between thinking and saying which is the hall-mark of high civilization.

But, however she might doubt the Belmaines, she had no doubt as to Neigh’s true sentiments: the time had come when he, notwithstanding his air of being oppressed by almost every lively invention of town and country for charming griefs to rest, would not be at all oppressed by a quiet visit to the purlieus of St Giles’s, Cripplegate, since she was the originator, and was going herself.

It was a bright hope-inspiring afternoon in this mid-May time when the carriage containing Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine, Mrs. Doncastle, and Ethelberta, crept along the encumbered streets towards Barbican; till turning out of that thoroughfare into Redcross Street they beheld the bold shape of the old tower they sought, clothed in every neutral shade, standing clear against the sky, dusky and grim in its upper stage, and hoary grey below, where every corner of every stone was completely rounded off by the waves of wind and storm.

All people were busy here: our visitors seemed to be the only idle persons the city contained; and there was no dissonance—there never is—between antiquity and such beehive industry; for pure industry, in failing to observe its own existence and aspect, partakes of the unobtrusive nature of material things.  This intra-mural stir was a flywheel transparent by excessive motion, through which Milton and his day could be seen as if nothing intervened.  Had there been ostensibly harmonious accessories, a crowd of observing people in search of the poetical, conscious of the place and the scene, what a discord would have arisen there!  But everybody passed by Milton’s grave except Ethelberta and her friends, and for the moment the city’s less invidious conduct appeared to her more respectful as a practice than her own.

But she was brought out of this rumination by the halt at the church door, and completely reminded of the present by finding the church open, and Neigh—the, till yesterday, unimpassioned Neigh—waiting in the vestibule to receive them, just as if he lived there.  Ladywell had not arrived.  It was a long time before Ethelberta could get back to Milton again, for Neigh was continuing to impend over her future more and more visibly.  The objects along the journey had distracted her mind from him; but the moment now was as a direct renewal and prolongation of the declaration-time yesterday, and as if in furtherance of the conclusion of the episode.

They all alighted and went in, the coachman being told to take the carriage to a quiet nook further on, and return in half-an-hour.  Mrs. Belmaine and her carriage some years before had accidentally got jammed crosswise in Cheapside through the clumsiness of the man in turning up a side street, blocking that great artery of the civilized world for the space of a minute and a half, when they were pounced upon by half-a-dozen policemen and forced to back ignominiously up a little slit between the houses where they did not mean to go, amid the shouts of the hindered drivers; and it was her nervous recollection of that event which caused Mrs. Belmaine to be so precise in her directions now.

By the time that they were grouped around the tomb the visit had assumed a much more solemn complexion than any one among them had anticipated.  Ashamed of the influence that she discovered Neigh to be exercising over her, and opposing it steadily, Ethelberta drew from her pocket a small edition of Milton, and proposed that she should read a few lines from ‘Paradise Lost.’  The responsibility of producing a successful afternoon was upon her shoulders; she was, moreover, the only one present who could properly manage blank verse, and this was sufficient to justify the proposal.

She stood with her head against the marble slab just below the bust, and began a selected piece, Neigh standing a few yards off on her right looking into his hat in order to listen accurately, Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine and Mrs. Doncastle seating themselves in a pew directly facing the monument.  The ripe warm colours of afternoon came in upon them from the west, upon the sallow piers and arches, and the infinitely deep brown pews beneath, the aisle over Ethelberta’s head being in misty shade through which glowed a lurid light from a dark-stained window behind.  The sentences fell from her lips in a rhythmical cadence one by one, and she could be fancied a priestess of him before whose image she stood, when with a vivid suggestiveness she delivered here, not many yards from the central money-mill of the world, yet out from the very tomb of their author, the passage containing the words:

      ‘Mammon led them on;
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From heaven.’

When she finished reading Ethelberta left the monument, and then each one present strayed independently about the building, Ethelberta turning to the left along the passage to the south door.  Neigh—from whose usually apathetic face and eyes there had proceeded a secret smouldering light as he listened and regarded her—followed in the same direction and vanished at her heels into the churchyard, whither she had now gone.  Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine exchanged glances, and instead of following the pair they went with Mrs. Doncastle into the vestry to inquire of the person in charge for the register of the marriage of Oliver Cromwell, which was solemnized here.  The church was now quite empty, and its stillness was as a vacuum into which an occasional noise from the street overflowed and became rarefied away to nothing.

Something like five minutes had passed when a hansom stopped outside the door, and Ladywell entered the porch.  He stood still, and, looking inquiringly round for a minute or two, sat down in one of the high pews, as if under the impression that the others had not yet arrived.

While he sat here Neigh reappeared at the south door opposite, and came slowly in.  Ladywell, in rising to go to him, saw that Neigh’s attention was engrossed by something he held in his hand.  It was his pocket-book, and Neigh was looking at a few loose flower-petals which had been placed between the pages.  When Ladywell came forward Neigh looked up, started, and closed the book quickly, so that some of the petals fluttered to the ground between the two men.  They were striped, red and white, and appeared to be leaves of the Harlequin rose.

‘Ah! here you are, Ladywell,’ he said, recovering himself.  ‘We had given you up: my aunt said that you would not care to come.  They are all in the vestry.’  How it came to pass that Neigh designated those in the vestry as ‘all,’ when there was one in the churchyard, was a thing that he himself could hardly have explained, so much more had it to do with instinct than with calculation.

‘Never mind them—don’t interrupt them,’ said Ladywell.  ‘The plain truth is that I have been very greatly disturbed in mind; and I could not appear earlier by reason of it.  I had some doubt about coming at all.’

‘I am sorry to hear that.’

‘Neigh—I may as well tell you and have done with it.  I have found that a lady of my acquaintance has two strings to her bow, or I am very much in error.’

‘What—Mrs. Petherwin?’ said Neigh uneasily.  ‘But I thought that—that fancy was over with you long ago.  Even your acquaintance with her was at an end, I thought.’

‘In a measure it is at an end.  But let me tell you that what you call a fancy has been anything but a fancy with me, to be over like a spring shower.  To speak plainly, Neigh, I consider myself badly used by that woman; damn badly used.’

‘Badly used?’ said Neigh mechanically, and wondering all the time if Ladywell had been informed that Ethelberta was to be one of the party to-day.

‘Well, I ought not to talk like that,’ said Ladywell, adopting a lighter tone.  ‘All is fair in courtship, I suppose, now as ever.  Indeed, I mean to put a good face upon it: if I am beaten, I am.  But it is very provoking, after supposing matters to be going on smoothly, to find out that you are quite mistaken.’

‘I told you you were quite mistaken in supposing she cared for you.’

‘That is just the point I was not mistaken in,’ said Ladywell warmly.  ‘She did care for me, and I stood as well with her as any man could stand until this fellow came, whoever he is.  I sometimes feel so disturbed about it that I have a good mind to call upon her and ask his name.  Wouldn’t you, Neigh?  Will you accompany me?’

‘I would in a moment, but, but— I strongly advise you not to go,’ said Neigh earnestly.  ‘It would be rash, you know, and rather unmannerly; and would only hurt your feelings.’

‘Well, I am always ready to yield to a friend’s arguments. . . .  A sneaking scamp, that’s what he is.  Why does he not show himself?’

‘Don’t you really know who he is?’ said Neigh, in a pronounced and exceptional tone, on purpose to give Ladywell a chance of suspecting, for the position was getting awkward.  But Ladywell was blind as Bartimeus in that direction, so well had indifference to Ethelberta’s charms been feigned by Neigh until he thought seriously of marrying her.  Yet, unfortunately for the interests of calmness, Ladywell was less blind with his outward eye.  In his reflections his glance had lingered again upon the pocket-book which Neigh still held in his hand, and upon the two or three rose-leaves on the floor, until he said idly, superimposing humorousness upon misery, as men in love can:

‘Rose-leaves, Neigh?  I thought you did not care for flowers.  What makes you amuse yourself with such sentimental objects as those, only fit for women, or painters like me?  If I had not observed you with my own eyes I should have said that you were about the last man in the world to care for things of that sort.  Whatever makes you keep rose-leaves in your pocket-book?’

‘The best reason on earth,’ said Neigh.  ‘A woman gave them to me.’

‘That proves nothing unless she is a great deal to you,’ said Ladywell, with the experienced air of a man who, whatever his inferiority in years to Neigh, was far beyond him in knowledge of that sort, by virtue of his recent trials.

‘She is a great deal to me.’

‘If I did not know you to be such a confirmed misogynist I should say that this is a serious matter.’

‘It is serious,’ said Neigh quietly.  ‘The probability is that I shall marry the woman who gave me these.  Anyhow I have asked her the question, and she has not altogether said no.’

‘I am glad to hear it, Neigh,’ said Ladywell heartily.  ‘I am glad to hear that your star is higher than mine.’

Before Neigh could make further reply Ladywell was attracted by the glow of green sunlight reflected through the south door by the grass of the churchyard, now in all its spring freshness and luxuriance.  He bent his steps thither, followed anxiously by Neigh.

‘I had no idea there was such a lovely green spot in the city,’ Ladywell continued, passing out.  ‘Trees too, planted in the manner of an orchard.  What a charming place!’

The place was truly charming just at that date.  The untainted leaves of the lime and plane trees and the newly-sprung grass had in the sun a brilliancy of beauty that was brought into extraordinary prominence by the sable soil showing here and there, and the charcoaled stems and trunks out of which the leaves budded: they seemed an importation, not a produce, and their delicacy such as would perish in a day.

‘What is this round tower?’ Ladywell said again, walking towards the iron-grey bastion, partly covered with ivy and Virginia creeper, which stood obtruding into the enclosure.

‘O, didn’t you know that was here?  That’s a piece of the old city wall,’ said Neigh, looking furtively around at the same time.  Behind the bastion the churchyard ran into a long narrow strip, grassed like the other part, but completely hidden from it by the cylinder of ragged masonry.  On rounding this projection, Ladywell beheld within a few feet of him a lady whom he knew too well.

‘Mrs. Petherwin here!’ exclaimed he, proving how ignorant he had been of the composition of the party he was to meet, and accounting at the same time for his laxity in attending it.

‘I forgot to tell you,’ said Neigh awkwardly, behind him, ‘that Mrs. Petherwin was to come with us.’

Ethelberta’s look was somewhat blushful and agitated, as if from some late transaction: she appeared to have been secluding herself there till she should have recovered her equanimity.  However, she came up to him and said, ‘I did not see you before this moment: we had been thinking you would not come.’

While these words were being prettily spoken, Ladywell’s face became pale as death.  On Ethelberta’s bosom were the stem and green calyx of a rose, almost all its flower having disappeared.  It had been a Harlequin rose, for two or three of its striped leaves remained to tell the tale.

She could not help noticing his fixed gaze, and she said quickly, ‘Yes, I have lost my pretty rose: this may as well go now,’ and she plucked the stem from its fastening in her dress and flung it away.

Poor Ladywell turned round to meet Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine, whose voices were beginning to be heard just within the church door, leaving Neigh and Ethelberta together.  It was a graceful act of young Ladywell’s that, in the midst of his own pain at the strange tale the rose-leaves suggested—Neigh’s rivalry, Ethelberta’s mutability, his own defeat—he was not regardless of the intense embarrassment which might have been caused had he remained.

The two were silent at first, and it was evident that Ethelberta’s mood was one of anger at something that had gone before.  She turned aside from him to follow the others, when Neigh spoke in a tone somewhat bitter and somewhat stern.

‘What—going like that!  After being compromised together, why don’t you close with me?  Ladywell knows all: I had already told him that the rose-leaves were given me by my intended wife.  We seem to him to be practising deceptions all of a piece, and what folly it is to play off so!  As to what I did, that I ask your forgiveness for.’

Ethelberta looked upon the ground and maintained a compressed lip.  Neigh resumed: ‘If I showed more feeling than you care for, I insist that it was not more than was natural under the circumstances, if not quite proper.  Opinions may differ, but my experience goes to prove that conventional squeamishness at such times as these is more talked and written about than practised.  Plain behaviour must be expected when marriage is the question.  Nevertheless, I do say—and I cannot say more—that I am sincerely sorry to have offended you by exceeding my privileges.  I will never do so again.’

‘Don’t say privileges.  You have none.’

‘I am sorry that I thought otherwise, and that others will think so too.  Ladywell is, at any rate, bent on thinking so. . . .  It might have been made known to him in a gentle way—but God disposes.’

‘There is nothing to make known—I don’t understand,’ said Ethelberta, going from him.

By this time Ladywell had walked round the gravel walks with the two other ladies and Mr. Belmaine, and they were all turning to come back again.  The young painter had deputed his voice to reply to their remarks, but his understanding continued poring upon other things.  When he came up to Ethelberta, his agitation had left him: she too was free from constraint; while Neigh was some distance off, carefully examining nothing in particular in an old fragment of wall.

The little party was now united again as to its persons; though in spirit far otherwise.  They went through the church in general talk, Ladywell sad but serene, and Ethelberta keeping far-removed both from him and from Neigh.  She had at this juncture entered upon that Sphinx-like stage of existence in which, contrary to her earlier manner, she signified to no one of her ways, plans, or sensations, and spoke little on any subject at all.  There were occasional smiles now which came only from the face, and speeches from the lips merely.

The journey home was performed as they had come, Ladywell not accepting the seat in Neigh’s cab which was phlegmatically offered him.  Mrs. Doncastle’s acquaintance with Ethelberta had been slight until this day; but the afternoon’s proceeding had much impressed the matron with her younger friend.  Before they parted she said, with the sort of affability which is meant to signify the beginning of permanent friendship: ‘A friend of my husband’s, Lord Mountclere, has been anxious for some time to meet you.  He is a great admirer of the poems, and more still of the story-telling invention, and your power in it.  He has been present many times at the Mayfair Hall to hear you.  When will you dine with us to meet him?  I know you will like him.  Will Thursday be convenient?’

Ethelberta stood for a moment reflecting, and reflecting hoped that Mrs. Doncastle had not noticed her momentary perplexity.  Crises were becoming as common with her as blackberries; and she had foreseen this one a long time.  It was not that she was to meet Lord Mountclere, for he was only a name and a distant profile to her: it was that her father would necessarily be present at the meeting, in the most anomalous position that human nature could endure.

However, having often proved in her disjointed experience that the shortest way out of a difficulty lies straight through it, Ethelberta decided to dine at the Doncastles’, and, as she murmured that she should have great pleasure in meeting any friend of theirs, set about contriving how the encounter with her dearest relative might be made safe and unsuspected.  She bade them adieu blithely; but the thoughts engendered by the invitation stood before her as sorrowful and rayless ghosts which could not be laid.  Often at such conjunctures as these, when the futility of her great undertaking was more than usually manifest, did Ethelberta long like a tired child for the conclusion of the whole matter; when her work should be over, and the evening come; when she might draw her boat upon the shore, and in some thymy nook await eternal night with a placid mind.

28. ETHELBERTA’S—MR. CHICKEREL’S ROOM

The question of Neigh or no Neigh had reached a pitch of insistence which no longer permitted of dallying, even by a popular beauty.  His character was becoming defined to Ethelberta as something very differently composed from that of her first imagining.  She had set him down to be a man whose external in excitability owed nothing to self-repression, but stood as the natural surface of the mass within.  Neigh’s urban torpor, she said, might have been in the first instance produced by art, but, were it thus, it had gone so far as to permeate him.  This had been disproved, first surprisingly, by his reported statement; wondrously, in the second place, by his call upon her and sudden proposal; thirdly, to a degree simply astounding, by what had occurred in the city that day.  For Neigh, before the fervour had subsided which was produced in him by her look and general power while reading ‘Paradise Lost,’ found himself alone with her in a nook outside the church, and there had almost demanded her promise to be his wife.  She had replied by asking for time, and idly offering him the petals of her rose, that had shed themselves in her hand.  Neigh, in taking them, pressed her fingers more warmly than she thought she had given him warrant for, which offended her.  It was certainly a very momentary affair, and when it was over seemed to surprise himself almost as much as it had vexed her; but it had reminded her of one truth which she was in danger of forgetting.  The town gentleman was not half so far removed from Sol and Dan, and the hard-handed order in general, in his passions as in his philosophy.  He still continued to be the male of his species, and when the heart was hot with a dream Pall Mall had much the same aspect as Wessex.

Well, she had not accepted him yet; indeed, for the moment they were in a pet with one another.  Yet that might soon be cleared off, and then recurred the perpetual question, would the advantage that might accrue to her people by her marriage be worth the sacrifice?  One palliative feature must be remembered when we survey the matrimonial ponderings of the poetess and romancer.  What she contemplated was not meanly to ensnare a husband just to provide incomes for her and her family, but to find some man she might respect, who would maintain her in such a stage of comfort as should, by setting her mind free from temporal anxiety, enable her to further organize her talent, and provide incomes for them herself.  Plenty of saleable originality was left in her as yet, but it was getting crushed under the rubbish of her necessities.

She was not sure that Neigh would stand the test of her revelations.  It would be possible to lead him to marry her without revealing anything—the events of the last few days had shown her that—yet Ethelberta’s honesty shrank from the safe course of holding her tongue.  It might be pleasant to many a modern gentleman to find himself allied with a lady, none of whose ancestors had ever pandered to a court, lost an army, taken a bribe, oppressed a community, or broken a bank; but the added disclosure that, in avoiding these stains, her kindred had worked and continued to work with their hands for bread, might lead such an one to consider that the novelty was dearly purchased.

Ethelberta was, upon the whole, dissatisfied with her progress thus far.  She had planned many things and fulfilled few.  Had her father been by this time provided for and made independent of the world, as she had thought he might be, not only would her course with regard to Neigh be quite clear, but the impending awkwardness of dining with her father behind her chair could not have occurred.  True, that was a small matter beside her regret for his own sake that he was still in harness; and a mere change of occupation would be but a tribute to a fastidiousness which he did not himself share.  She had frequently tried to think of a vocation for him that would have a more dignified sound, and be less dangerously close to her own path: the post of care-taker at some provincial library, country stationer, registrar of births and deaths, and many others had been discussed and dismissed in face of the unmanageable fact that her father was serenely happy and comfortable as a butler, looking with dread at any hint of change short of perfect retirement.  Since, then, she could not offer him this retirement, what right had she to interfere with his mode of life at all?  In no other social groove on earth would he thrive as he throve in his present one, to which he had been accustomed from boyhood, and where the remuneration was actually greater than in professions ten times as stately in name.

For the rest, too, Ethelberta had indulged in hopes, the high education of the younger ones being the chief of these darling wishes.  Picotee wanted looking to badly enough.  Sol and Dan required no material help; they had quickly obtained good places of work under a Pimlico builder; for though the brothers scarcely showed as yet the light-fingered deftness of London artizans, the want was in a measure compensated by their painstaking, and employers are far from despising country hands who bring with them strength, industry, and a desire to please.  But their sister had other lines laid down for them than those of level progress; to start them some day as masters instead of men was a long-cherished wish of Ethelberta’s.

Thus she had quite enough machinery in her hands to keep decently going, even were she to marry a man who would take a kindly view of her peculiar situation, and afford her opportunities of strengthening her powers for her kindred’s good.  But what would be the result if, eighteen months hence—the date at which her occupation of the house in Exonbury Crescent came to an end—she were still a widow, with no accumulated capital, her platform talents grown homely and stunted through narrow living, and her tender vein of poesy completely dispersed by it?  To calmly relinquish the struggle at that point would have been the act of a stoic, but not of a woman, particularly when she considered the children, the hopes of her mother for them, and her own condition—though this was least—under the ironical cheers which would greet a slip back into the mire.

It here becomes necessary to turn for a moment to Master Joey Chickerel, Ethelberta’s troublesome page and brother.  The face of this juvenile was that of a Graeco-Roman satyr to the furthest degree of completeness.  Viewed in front, the outer line of his upper lip rose in a double arch nearly to his little round nostrils, giving an expression of a jollity so delicious to himself as to compel a perpetual drawing in of his breath.  During half-laughs his lips parted in the middle, and remained closed at the corners, which were small round pits like his nostrils, the same form being repeated as dimples a little further back upon his cheek.  The opening for each eye formed a sparkling crescent, both upper and under lid having the convexity upwards.

But during some few days preceding the dinner-party at the Doncastles’ all this changed.  The luxuriant curves departed, a compressed lineality was to be observed everywhere, the pupils of his eyes seemed flattened, and the carriage of his head was limp and sideways.  This was a feature so remarkable and new in him that Picotee noticed it, and was lifted from the melancholy current of her own affairs in contemplating his.

‘Well, what’s the matter?’ said Picotee.

‘O—nothing,’ said Joey.

‘Nothing?  How can you say so?’

‘The world’s a holler mockery—that’s what I say.’

‘Yes, so it is, to some; but not to you,’ said Picotee, sighing.

‘Don’t talk argument, Picotee.  I only hope you’ll never feel what I feel now.  If it wasn’t for my juties here I know what I’d do; I’d ’list, that’s what I’d do.  But having my position to fill here as the only responsible man-servant in the house, I can’t leave.’

‘Has anybody been beating you?’

‘Beating!  Do I look like a person who gets beatings?  No, it is a madness,’ said Joey, putting his hand upon his chest.  ‘The case is, I am in love.’

‘O Joey, a boy no bigger than you are!’ said Picotee reprovingly.  Her personal interest in the passion, however, provoked her to inquire, in the next breath, ‘Who is it?  Do tell, Joey.’

‘No bigger than I!  What hev bigness to do with it?  That’s just like your old-fashioned notions.  Bigness is no more wanted in courting nowadays than in soldiering or smoking or any other duty of man.  Husbands is rare; and a promising courter who means business will fetch his price in these times, big or small, I assure ye.  I might have been engaged a dozen times over as far as the bigness goes.  You should see what a miserable little fellow my rival is afore you talk like that.  Now you know I’ve got a rival, perhaps you’ll own there must be something in it.’

‘Yes, that seems like the real thing.  But who is the young woman?’

‘Well, I don’t mind telling you, Picotee.  It is Mrs. Doncastle’s new maid.  I called to see father last night, and had supper there; and you should have seen how lovely she were—eating sparrowgrass sideways, as if she were born to it.  But, of course, there’s a rival—there always is—I might have known that, and I will crush him!’

‘But Mrs. Doncastle’s new maid—if that was she I caught a glimpse of the other day—is ever so much older than you—a dozen years.’

‘What’s that to a man in love?  Pooh—I wish you would leave me, Picotee; I wants to be alone.’

A short time after this Picotee was in the company of Ethelberta, and she took occasion to mention Joey’s attachment.  Ethelberta grew exceedingly angry directly she heard of it.

‘What a fearful nuisance that boy is becoming,’ she said.  ‘Does father know anything of this?’

‘I think not,’ said Picotee.  ‘O no, he cannot; he would not allow any such thing to go on; she is so much older than Joey.’

‘I should think he wouldn’t allow it!  The fact is I must be more strict about this growing friendliness between you all and the Doncastle servants.  There shall be absolutely no intimacy or visiting of any sort.  When father wants to see any of you he must come here, unless there is a most serious reason for your calling upon him.  Some disclosure or reference to me otherwise than as your mistress, will certainly be made else, and then I am ruined.  I will speak to father myself about Joey’s absurd nonsense this evening.  I am going to see him on another matter.’  And Ethelberta sighed.  ‘I am to dine there on Thursday,’ she added.

‘To dine there, Berta?  Well, that is a strange thing!  Why, father will be close to you!’

‘Yes,’ said Ethelberta quietly.

‘How I should like to see you sitting at a grand dinner-table, among lordly dishes and shining people, and father about the room unnoticed!  Berta, I have never seen a dinner-party in my life, and father said that I should some day; he promised me long ago.’

‘How will he be able to carry out that, my dear child?’ said Ethelberta, drawing her sister gently to her side.

‘Father says that for an hour and a half the guests are quite fixed in the dining-room, and as unlikely to move as if they were trees planted round the table.  Do let me go and see you, Berta,’ Picotee added coaxingly.  ‘I would give anything to see how you look in the midst of elegant people talking and laughing, and you my own sister all the time, and me looking on like puss-in-the-corner.’

Ethelberta could hardly resist the entreaty, in spite of her recent resolution.

‘We will leave that to be considered when I come home to-night,’ she said.  ‘I must hear what father says.’

After dark the same evening a woman, dressed in plain black and wearing a hood, went to the servants’ entrance of Mr. Doncastle’s house, and inquired for Mr. Chickerel.  Ethelberta found him in a room by himself, and on entering she closed the door behind her, and unwrapped her face.

‘Can you sit with me a few minutes, father?’ she said.

‘Yes, for a quarter of an hour or so,’ said the butler.  ‘Has anything happened?  I thought it might be Picotee.’

‘No.  All’s well yet.  But I thought it best to see you upon one or two matters which are harassing me a little just now.  The first is, that stupid boy Joey has got entangled in some way with the lady’s-maid at this house; a ridiculous affair it must be by all account, but it is too serious for me to treat lightly.  She will worm everything out of him, and a pretty business it will be then.’

‘God bless my soul! why, the woman is old enough to be his mother!  I have never heard a sound of it till now.  What do you propose to do?’

‘I have hardly thought: I cannot tell at all.  But we will consider that after I have done.  The next thing is, I am to dine here Thursday—that is, to-morrow.’

‘You going to dine here, are you?’ said her father in surprise.  ‘Dear me, that’s news.  We have a dinner-party to-morrow, but I was not aware that you knew our people.’

‘I have accepted the invitation,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘But if you think I had better stay away, I will get out of it by some means.  Heavens! what does that mean—will anybody come in?’ she added, rapidly pulling up her hood and jumping from the seat as the loud tones of a bell clanged forth in startling proximity.

‘O no—it is all safe,’ said her father.  ‘It is the area door—nothing to do with me.  About the dinner: I don’t see why you may not come.  Of course you will take no notice of me, nor shall I of you.  It is to be rather a large party.  Lord What’s-his-name is coming, and several good people.’

‘Yes; he is coming to meet me, it appears.  But, father,’ she said more softly and slowly, ‘how wrong it will be for me to come so close to you, and never recognize you!  I don’t like it.  I wish you could have given up service by this time; it would have been so much less painful for us all round.  I thought we might have been able to manage it somehow.’

‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said Mr. Chickerel crossly.  ‘There is not the least reason why I should give up.  I want to save a little money first.  If you don’t like me as I am, you must keep away from me.  Don’t be uneasy about my comfort; I am right enough, thank God.  I can mind myself for many a year yet.’

Ethelberta looked at him with tears in her eyes, but she did not speak.  She never could help crying when she met her father here.

‘I have been in service now for more than seven-and-thirty years,’ her father went on.  ‘It is an honourable calling; and why should you maintain me because you can earn a few pounds by your gifts, and an old woman left you her house and a few sticks of furniture?  If she had left you any money it would have been a different thing, but as you have to work for every penny you get, I cannot think of it.  Suppose I should agree to come and live with you, and then you should be ill, or such like, and I no longer able to help myself?  O no, I’ll stick where I am, for here I am safe as to food and shelter at any rate.  Surely, Ethelberta, it is only right that I, who ought to keep you all, should at least keep your mother and myself?  As to our position, that we cannot help; and I don’t mind that you are unable to own me.’

‘I wish I could own you—all of you.’

‘Well, you chose your course, my dear; and you must abide by it.  Having put your hand to the plough, it will be foolish to turn back.’

‘It would, I suppose.  Yet I wish I could get a living by some simple humble occupation, and drop the name of Petherwin, and be Berta Chickerel again, and live in a green cottage as we used to do when I was small.  I am miserable to a pitiable degree sometimes, and sink into regrets that I ever fell into such a groove as this.  I don’t like covert deeds, such as coming here to-night, and many are necessary with me from time to time.  There is something without which splendid energies are a drug; and that is a cold heart.  There is another thing necessary to energy, too—the power of distinguishing your visions from your reasonable forecasts when looking into the future, so as to allow your energy to lay hold of the forecasts only.  I begin to have a fear that mother is right when she implies that I undertook to carry out visions and all.  But ten of us are so many to cope with.  If God Almighty had only killed off three-quarters of us when we were little, a body might have done something for the rest; but as we are it is hopeless!’

‘There is no use in your going into high doctrine like that,’ said Chickerel.  ‘As I said before, you chose your course.  You have begun to fly high, and you had better keep there.’

‘And to do that there is only one way—that is, to do it surely, so that I have some groundwork to enable me to keep up to the mark in my profession.  That way is marriage.’

‘Marriage?  Who are you going to marry?’

‘God knows.  Perhaps Lord Mountclere.  Stranger things have happened.’

‘Yes, so they have; though not many wretcheder things.  I would sooner see you in your grave, Ethelberta, than Lord Mountclere’s wife, or the wife of anybody like him, great as the honour would be.’

‘Of course that was only something to say; I don’t know the man even.’

‘I know his valet.  However, marry who you may, I hope you’ll be happy, my dear girl.  You would be still more divided from us in that event; but when your mother and I are dead, it will make little difference.’

Ethelberta placed her hand upon his shoulder, and smiled cheerfully.  ‘Now, father, don’t despond.  All will be well, and we shall see no such misfortune as that for many a year.  Leave all to me.  I am a rare hand at contrivances.’

‘You are indeed, Berta.  It seems to me quite wonderful that we should be living so near together and nobody suspect the relationship, because of the precautions you have taken.’

‘Yet the precautions were rather Lady Petherwin’s than mine, as you know.  Consider how she kept me abroad.  My marriage being so secret made it easy to cut off all traces, unless anybody had made it a special business to search for them.  That people should suspect as yet would be by far the more wonderful thing of the two.  But we must, for one thing, have no visiting between our girls and the servants here, or they soon will suspect.’

Ethelberta then laid down a few laws on the subject, and, explaining the other details of her visit, told her father soon that she must leave him.

He took her along the passage and into the area.  They were standing at the bottom of the steps, saying a few parting words about Picotee’s visit to see the dinner, when a female figure appeared by the railing above, slipped in at the gate, and flew down the steps past the father and daughter.  At the moment of passing she whispered breathlessly to him, ‘Is that you, Mr. Chickerel?’

‘Yes,’ said the butler.

She tossed into his arms a quantity of wearing apparel, and adding, ‘Please take them upstairs for me—I am late,’ rushed into the house.

‘Good heavens, what does that mean?’ said Ethelberta, holding her father’s arm in her uneasiness.

‘That’s the new lady’s-maid, just come in from an evening walk—that young scamp’s sweetheart, if what you tell me is true.  I don’t yet know what her character is, but she runs neck and neck with time closer than any woman I ever met.  She stays out at night like this till the last moment, and often throws off her dashing courting-clothes in this way, as she runs down the steps, to save a journey to the top of the house to her room before going to Mrs. Doncastle’s, who is in fact at this minute waiting for her.  Only look here.’  Chickerel gathered up a hat decked with feathers and flowers, a parasol, and a light muslin train-skirt, out of the pocket of the latter tumbling some long golden tresses of hair.

‘What an extraordinary woman,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘A perfect Cinderella.  The idea of Joey getting desperate about a woman like that; no doubt she has just come in from meeting him.’

‘No doubt—a blockhead.  That’s his taste, is it!  I’ll soon see if I can’t cure his taste if it inclines towards Mrs. Menlove.’

‘Mrs. what?’

‘Menlove; that’s her name.  She came about a fortnight ago.’

‘And is that Menlove—what shall we do!’ exclaimed Ethelberta.  ‘The idea of the boy singling out her—why it is ruin to him, to me, and to us all!’

She hastily explained to her father that Menlove had been Lady Petherwin’s maid and her own at some time before the death of her mother-in-law, that she had only stayed with them through a three months’ tour because of her flightiness, and hence had learnt nothing of Ethelberta’s history, and probably had never thought at all about it.  But nevertheless they were as well acquainted as a lady and her maid well could be in the time.  ‘Like all such doubtful characters,’ continued Ethelberta, ‘she was one of the cleverest and lightest-handed women we ever had about us.  When she first came, my hair was getting quite weak; but by brushing it every day in a peculiar manner, and treating it as only she knew how, she brought it into splendid condition.’

‘Well, this is the devil to pay, upon my life!’ said Mr. Chickerel, with a miserable gaze at the bundle of clothes and the general situation at the same time.  ‘Unfortunately for her friendship, I have snubbed her two or three times already, for I don’t care about her manner.  You know she has a way of trading on a man’s sense of honour till it puts him into an awkward position.  She is perfectly well aware that, whatever scrape I find her out in, I shall not have the conscience to report her, because I am a man, and she is a defenceless woman; and so she takes advantage of one’s feeling by making me, or either of the menservants, her bottle-holder, as you see she has done now.’

‘This is all simply dreadful,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘Joey is shrewd and trustworthy; but in the hands of such a woman as that!  I suppose she did not recognize me.’

‘There was no chance of that in the dark.’

‘Well, I cannot do anything in it,’ said she.  ‘I cannot manage Joey at all.’

‘I will see if I can,’ said Mr. Chickerel.  ‘Courting at his age, indeed—what shall we hear next!’

Chickerel then accompanied his daughter along the street till an empty cab passed them, and putting her into it he returned to the house again.

29. ETHELBERTA’S DRESSING-ROOM—MR. DONCASTLE’S HOUSE

The dressing of Ethelberta for the dinner-party was an undertaking into which Picotee threw her whole skill as tirewoman.  Her energies were brisker that day than they had been at any time since the Julians first made preparations for departure from town; for a letter had come to her from Faith, telling of their arrival at the old cathedral city, which was found to suit their inclinations and habits infinitely better than London; and that she would like Picotee to visit them there some day.  Picotee felt, and so probably felt the writer of the letter, that such a visit would not be very practicable just now; but it was a pleasant idea, and for fastening dreams upon was better than nothing.

Such musings were encouraged also by Ethelberta’s remarks as the dressing went on.

‘We will have a change soon,’ she said; ‘we will go out of town for a few days.  It will do good in many ways.  I am getting so alarmed about the health of the children; their faces are becoming so white and thin and pinched that an old acquaintance would hardly know them; and they were so plump when they came.  You are looking as pale as a ghost, and I daresay I am too.  A week or two at Knollsea will see us right.’

‘O, how charming!’ said Picotee gladly.

Knollsea was a village on the coast, not very far from Melchester, the new home of Christopher; not very far, that is to say, in the eye of a sweetheart; but seeing that there was, as the crow flies, a stretch of thirty-five miles between the two places, and that more than one-third the distance was without a railway, an elderly gentleman might have considered their situations somewhat remote from each other.

‘Why have you chosen Knollsea?’ inquired Picotee.

‘Because of aunt’s letter from Rouen—have you seen it?’

‘I did not read it through.’

‘She wants us to get a copy of the register of her baptism; and she is not absolutely certain which of the parishes in and about Knollsea they were living in when she was born.  Mother, being a year younger, cannot tell of course.  First I thought of writing to the clergyman of each parish, but that would be troublesome, and might reveal the secret of my birth; but if we go down there for a few days, and take some lodgings, we shall be able to find out all about it at leisure.  Gwendoline and Joey can attend to mother and the people downstairs, especially as father will look in every evening until he goes out of town, to see if they are getting on properly.  It will be such a weight off my soul to slip away from acquaintances here.’

‘Will it?’

‘Yes.  At the same time I ought not to speak so, for they have been very kind.  I wish we could go to Rouen afterwards; aunt repeats her invitation as usual.  However, there is time enough to think of that.’

Ethelberta was dressed at last, and, beholding the lonely look of poor Picotee when about to leave the room, she could not help having a sympathetic feeling that it was rather hard for her sister to be denied so small an enjoyment as a menial peep at a feast when she herself was to sit down to it as guest.

‘If you still want to go and see the procession downstairs you may do so,’ she said reluctantly; ‘provided that you take care of your tongue when you come in contact with Menlove, and adhere to father’s instructions as to how long you may stay.  It may be in the highest degree unwise; but never mind, go.’

Then Ethelberta departed for the scene of action, just at the hour of the sun’s lowest decline, when it was fading away, yellow and mild as candle-light, and when upper windows facing north-west reflected to persons in the street dissolving views of tawny cloud with brazen edges, the original picture of the same being hidden from sight by soiled walls and slaty slopes.

Before entering the presence of host and hostess, Ethelberta contrived to exchange a few words with her father.

‘In excellent time,’ he whispered, full of paternal pride at the superb audacity of her situation here in relation to his.  ‘About half of them are come.’

‘Mr. Neigh?’

‘Not yet; he’s coming.’

‘Lord Mountclere?’

‘Yes.  He came absurdly early; ten minutes before anybody else, so that Mrs. D. could hardly get on her bracelets and things soon enough to scramble downstairs and receive him; and he’s as nervous as a boy.  Keep up your spirits, dear, and don’t mind me.’

‘I will, father.  And let Picotee see me at dinner if you can.  She is very anxious to look at me.  She will be here directly.’

And Ethelberta, having been announced, joined the chamberful of assembled guests, among whom for the present we lose sight of her.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the evening outside the house was deepening in tone, and the lamps began to blink up.  Her sister having departed, Picotee hastily arrayed herself in a little black jacket and chip hat, and tripped across the park to the same point.  Chickerel had directed a maid-servant known as Jane to receive his humbler daughter and make her comfortable; and that friendly person, who spoke as if she had known Picotee five-and-twenty years, took her to the housekeeper’s room, where the visitor deposited her jacket and hat, and rested awhile.

A quick-eyed, light-haired, slight-built woman came in when Jane had gone.  ‘Are you Miss Chickerel?’ she said to Picotee.

‘Yes,’ said Picotee, guessing that this was Menlove, and fearing her a little.

‘Jane tells me that you have come to visit your father, and would like to look at the company going to dinner.  Well, they are not much to see, you know; but such as they are you are welcome to the sight of.  Come along with me.’

‘I think I would rather wait for father, if you will excuse me, please.’

‘Your father is busy now; it is no use for you to think of saying anything to him.’

Picotee followed her guide up a back staircase to the height of several flights, and then, crossing a landing, they descended to the upper part of the front stairs.

‘Now look over the balustrade, and you will see them all in a minute,’ said Mrs. Menlove.  ‘O, you need not be timid; you can look out as far as you like.  We are all independent here; no slavery for us: it is not as it is in the country, where servants are considered to be of different blood and bone from their employers, and to have no eyes for anything but their work.  Here they are coming.’

Picotee then had the pleasure of looking down upon a series of human crowns—some black, some white, some strangely built upon, some smooth and shining—descending the staircase in disordered column and great discomfort, their owners trying to talk, but breaking off in the midst of syllables to look to their footing.  The young girl’s eyes had not drooped over the handrail more than a few moments when she softly exclaimed, ‘There she is, there she is!  How lovely she looks, does she not?’

‘Who?’ said Mrs. Menlove.

Picotee recollected herself, and hastily drew in her impulses.  ‘My dear mistress,’ she said blandly.  ‘That is she on Mr. Doncastle’s arm.  And look, who is that funny old man the elderly lady is helping downstairs?’

‘He is our honoured guest, Lord Mountclere.  Mrs. Doncastle will have him all through the dinner, and after that he will devote himself to Mrs. Petherwin, your “dear mistress.”  He keeps looking towards her now, and no doubt thinks it a nuisance that she is not with him.  Well, it is useless to stay here.  Come a little further—we’ll follow them.’  Menlove began to lead the way downstairs, but Picotee held back.

‘Won’t they see us?’ she said.

‘No.  And if they do, it doesn’t matter.  Mrs. Doncastle would not object in the least to the daughter of her respected head man being accidentally seen in the hall.’

They descended to the bottom and stood in the hall.  ‘O, there’s father!’ whispered Picotee, with childlike gladness, as Chickerel became visible to her by the door.  The butler nodded to his daughter, and became again engrossed in his duties.

‘I wish I could see her—my mistress—again,’ said Picotee.

‘You seem mightily concerned about your mistress,’ said Menlove.  ‘Do you want to see if you have dressed her properly?’

‘Yes, partly; and I like her, too.  She is very kind to me.’

‘You will have a chance of seeing her soon.  When the door is nicely open you can look in for a moment.  I must leave you now for a few minutes, but I will come again.’

Menlove departed, and Picotee stood waiting.  She wondered how Ethelberta was getting on, and whether she enjoyed herself as much as it seemed her duty to do in such a superbly hospitable place.  Picotee then turned her attention to the hall, every article of furniture therein appearing worthy of scrutiny to her unaccustomed eyes.  Here she walked and looked about for a long time till an excellent opportunity offered itself of seeing how affairs progressed in the dining-room.

Through the partly-opened door there became visible a sideboard which first attracted her attention by its richness.  It was, indeed, a noticeable example of modern art-workmanship, in being exceptionally large, with curious ebony mouldings at different stages; and, while the heavy cupboard doors at the bottom were enriched with inlays of paler wood, other panels were decorated with tiles, as if the massive composition had been erected on the spot as part of the solid building.  However, it was on a space higher up that Picotee’s eyes and thoughts were fixed.  In the great mirror above the middle ledge she could see reflected the upper part of the dining-room, and this suggested to her that she might see Ethelberta and the other guests reflected in the same way by standing on a chair, which, quick as thought, she did.

To Picotee’s dazed young vision her beautiful sister appeared as the chief figure of a glorious pleasure-parliament of both sexes, surrounded by whole regiments of candles grouped here and there about the room.  She and her companions were seated before a large flowerbed, or small hanging garden, fixed at about the level of the elbow, the attention of all being concentrated rather upon the uninteresting margin of the bed, and upon each other, than on the beautiful natural objects growing in the middle, as it seemed to Picotee.  In the ripple of conversation Ethelberta’s clear voice could occasionally be heard, and her young sister could see that her eyes were bright, and her face beaming, as if divers social wants and looming penuriousness had never been within her experience.  Mr. Doncastle was quite absorbed in what she was saying.  So was the queer old man whom Menlove had called Lord Mountclere.

‘The dashing widow looks very well, does she not?’ said a person at Picotee’s elbow.

It was her conductor Menlove, now returned again, whom Picotee had quite forgotten.

‘She will do some damage here to-night you will find,’ continued Menlove.  ‘How long have you been with her?’

‘O, a long time—I mean rather a short time,’ stammered Picotee.

‘I know her well enough.  I was her maid once, or rather her mother-in-law’s, but that was long before you knew her.  I did not by any means find her so lovable as you seem to think her when I had to do with her at close quarters.  An awful flirt—awful.  Don’t you find her so?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If you don’t yet you will know.  But come down from your perch—the dining-room door will not be open again for some time—and I will show you about the rooms upstairs.  This is a larger house than Mrs. Petherwin’s, as you see.  Just come and look at the drawing-rooms.’

Wishing much to get rid of Menlove, yet fearing to offend her, Picotee followed upstairs.  Dinner was almost over by this time, and when they entered the front drawing-room a young man-servant and maid were there rekindling the lights.

‘Now let’s have a game of cat-and-mice,’ said the maid-servant cheerily.  ‘There’s plenty of time before they come up.’

‘Agreed,’ said Menlove promptly.  ‘You will play, will you not, Miss Chickerel?’

‘No, indeed,’ said Picotee, aghast.

‘Never mind, then; you look on.’

Away then ran the housemaid and Menlove, and the young footman started at their heels.  Round the room, over the furniture, under the furniture, through the furniture, out of one window, along the balcony, in at another window, again round the room—so they glided with the swiftness of swallows and the noiselessness of ghosts.

Then the housemaid drew a jew’s-harp from her pocket, and struck up a lively waltz sotto voce.  The footman seized Menlove, who appeared nothing loth, and began spinning gently round the room with her, to the time of the fascinating measure

‘Which fashion hails, from countesses to queens,
And maids and valets dance behind the scenes.’

Picotee, who had been accustomed to unceiled country cottages all her life, wherein the scamper of a mouse is heard distinctly from floor to floor, exclaimed in a terrified whisper, at viewing all this, ‘They’ll hear you underneath, they’ll hear you, and we shall all be ruined!’

‘Not at all,’ came from the cautious dancers.  ‘These are some of the best built houses in London—double floors, filled in with material that will deaden any row you like to make, and we make none.  But come and have a turn yourself, Miss Chickerel.’

The young man relinquished Menlove, and on the spur of the moment seized Picotee.  Picotee flounced away from him in indignation, backing into a corner with ruffled feathers, like a pullet trying to appear a hen.

‘How dare you touch me!’ she said, with rounded eyes.  ‘I’ll tell somebody downstairs of you, who’ll soon see about it!’

‘What a baby; she’ll tell her father.’

‘No I shan’t; somebody you are all afraid of, that’s who I’ll tell.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Menlove; ‘he meant no harm.’

Playtime was now getting short, and further antics being dangerous on that account, the performers retired again downstairs, Picotee of necessity following.  Her nerves were screwed up to the highest pitch of uneasiness by the grotesque habits of these men and maids, who were quite unlike the country servants she had known, and resembled nothing so much as pixies, elves, or gnomes, peeping up upon human beings from their shady haunts underground, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill—sometimes doing heavy work, sometimes none; teasing and worrying with impish laughter half suppressed, and vanishing directly mortal eyes were bent on them.  Separate and distinct from overt existence under the sun, this life could hardly be without its distinctive pleasures, all of them being more or less pervaded by thrills and titillations from games of hazard, and the perpetual risk of sensational surprises.

Long before this time Picotee had begun to be anxious to get home again, but Menlove seemed particularly to desire her company, and pressed her to sit awhile, telling her young friend, by way of entertainment, of various extraordinary love adventures in which she had figured as heroine when travelling on the Continent.  These stories had one and all a remarkable likeness in a certain point—Menlove was always unwilling to love the adorer, and the adorer was always unwilling to live afterwards on account of it.

‘Ha-ha-ha!’ in men’s voices was heard from the distant dining-room as the two women went on talking.

‘And then,’ continued Menlove, ‘there was that duel I was the cause of between the courier and the French valet.  Dear me, what a trouble that was; yet I could do nothing to prevent it.  This courier was a very handsome man—they are handsome sometimes.’

‘Yes, they are.  My aunt married one.’

‘Did she?  Where do they live?’

‘They keep an hotel at Rouen,’ murmured Picotee, in doubt whether this should have been told or not.

‘Well, he used to follow me to the English Church every Sunday regularly, and I was so determined not to give my hand where my heart could never be, that I slipped out at the other door while he stood expecting me by the one I entered.  Here I met M. Pierre, when, as ill luck would have it, the other came round the corner, and seeing me talking to the valet, he challenged him at once.’

‘Ha-ha-ha!’ was heard again afar.

‘Did they fight?’ said Picotee.

‘Yes, I believe they did.  We left Nice the next day; but I heard some time after of a duel not many miles off, and although I could not get hold of the names, I make no doubt it was between those two gentlemen.  I never knew which of them fell; poor fellow, whichever it was.’

‘Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!’ came from the dining-room.

‘Whatever are those boozy men laughing at, I wonder?’ said Menlove.  ‘They are always so noisy when the ladies have gone upstairs.  Upon my soul, I’ll run up and find out.’

‘No, no, don’t,’ entreated Picotee, putting her hand on her entertainer’s arm.  ‘It seems wrong; it is no concern of ours.’

‘Wrong be hanged—anything on an impulse,’ said Mrs. Menlove, skipping across the room and out of the door, which stood open, as did others in the house, the evening being sultry and oppressive.

Picotee waited in her seat until it occurred to her that she could escape the lady’s-maid by going off into her father’s pantry in her absence.  But before this had been put into effect Menlove appeared again.

‘Such fun as they are having up there,’ she said.  ‘Somebody asked Mr. Neigh to tell a story which he had told at some previous time, but he was very reluctant to do so, and pretended he could not recollect it.  Well, then, the other man—I could not distinguish him by his voice—began telling it, to prompt Mr. Neigh’s memory; and, as far as I could understand, it was about some lady who thought Mr. Neigh was in love with her, and, to find whether he was worth accepting or not, she went with her maid at night to see his estate, and wandered about and got lost, and was frightened, and I don’t know what besides.  Then Mr. Neigh laughed too, and said he liked such common sense in a woman.  No names were mentioned, but I fancy, from the awkwardness of Mr. Neigh at being compelled to tell it, that the lady is one of those in the drawing-room.  I should like to know which it was.’

‘I know—have heard something about it,’ said Picotee, blushing with anger.  ‘It was nothing at all like that.  I wonder Mr. Neigh had the audacity ever to talk of the matter, and to misrepresent it so greatly!’

‘Tell all about it, do,’ said Menlove.

‘O no,’ said Picotee.  ‘I promised not to say a word.’

‘It is your mistress, I expect.’

‘You may think what you like; but the lady is anything but a mistress of mine.’

The flighty Menlove pressed her to tell the whole story, but finding this useless the subject was changed.  Presently her father came in, and, taking no notice of Menlove, told his daughter that she had been called for.  Picotee very readily put on her things, and on going outside found Joey awaiting her.  Mr. Chickerel followed closely, with sharp glances from the corner of his eye, and it was plain from Joey’s nervous manner of lingering in the shadows of the area doorway instead of entering the house, that the butler had in some way set himself to prevent all communion between the fair lady’s-maid and his son for that evening at least.

He watched Picotee and her brother off the premises, and the pair went on their way towards Exonbury Crescent, very few words passing between them.  Picotee’s thoughts had turned to the proposed visit to Knollsea, and Joey was sulky under disappointment and the blank of thwarted purposes.

30. ON THE HOUSETOP

‘Picotee, are you asleep?’ Ethelberta whispered softly at dawn the next morning, by the half-opened door of her sister’s bedroom.

‘No, I keep waking, it is so warm.’

‘So do I.  Suppose we get up and see the sun rise.  The east is filling with flame.’

‘Yes, I should like it,’ said Picotee.

The restlessness which had brought Ethelberta hither in slippers and dressing-gown at such an early hour owed its origin to another cause than the warmth of the weather; but of that she did not speak as yet.  Picotee’s room was an attic, with windows in the roof—a chamber dismal enough at all times, and very shadowy now.  While Picotee was wrapping up, Ethelberta placed a chair under the window, and mounting upon this they stepped outside, and seated themselves within the parapet.

The air was as clear and fresh as on a mountain side; sparrows chattered, and birds of a species unsuspected at later hours could be heard singing in the park hard by, while here and there on ridges and flats a cat might be seen going calmly home from the devilries of the night to resume the amiabilities of the day.

‘I am so sorry I was asleep when you reached home,’ said Picotee.  ‘I was so anxious to tell you something I heard of, and to know what you did; but my eyes would shut, try as I might, and then I tried no longer.  Did you see me at all, Berta?’

‘Never once.  I had an impression that you were there.  I fancied you were from father’s carefully vacuous look whenever I glanced at his face.  But were you careful about what you said, and did you see Menlove?  I felt all the time that I had done wrong in letting you come; the gratification to you was not worth the risk to me.’

‘I saw her, and talked to her.  But I am certain she suspected nothing.  I enjoyed myself very much, and there was no risk at all.’

‘I am glad it is no worse news.  However, you must not go there again: upon that point I am determined.’

‘It was a good thing I did go, all the same.  I’ll tell you why when you have told me what happened to you.’

‘Nothing of importance happened to me.’

‘I expect you got to know the lord you were to meet?’

‘O yes—Lord Mountclere.’

‘And it’s dreadful how fond he is of you—quite ridiculously taken up with you—I saw that well enough.  Such an old man, too; I wouldn’t have him for the world!’

‘Don’t jump at conclusions so absurdly, Picotee.  Why wouldn’t you have him for the world?’

‘Because he is old enough to be my grandfather, and yours too.’

‘Indeed he is not; he is only middle-aged.’

‘O Berta!  Sixty-five at least.’

‘He may or may not be that; and if he is, it is not old.  He is so entertaining that one forgets all about age in connection with him.’

‘He laughs like this—“Hee-hee-hee!”’  Picotee introduced as much antiquity into her face as she could by screwing it up and suiting the action to the word.

‘This very odd thing occurred,’ said Ethelberta, to get Picotee off the track of Lord Mountclere’s peculiarities, as it seemed.  ‘I was saying to Mr. Neigh that we were going to Knollsea for a time, feeling that he would not be likely to know anything about such an out-of-the-way place, when Lord Mountclere, who was near, said, “I shall be at Enckworth Court in a few days, probably at the time you are at Knollsea.  The Imperial Archaeological Association holds its meetings in that part of Wessex this season, and Corvsgate Castle, near Knollsea, is one of the places on our list.”  Then he hoped I should be able to attend.  Did you ever hear anything so strange?  Now, I should like to attend very much, not on Lord Mountclere’s account, but because such gatherings are interesting, and I have never been to one; yet there is this to be considered, would it be right for me to go without a friend to such a place?  Another point is, that we shall live in menagerie style at Knollsea for the sake of the children, and we must do it economically in case we accept Aunt Charlotte’s invitation to Rouen; hence, if he or his friends find us out there it will be awkward for me.  So the alternative is Knollsea or some other place for us.’

‘Let it be Knollsea, now we have once settled it,’ said Picotee anxiously.  ‘I have mentioned to Faith Julian that we shall be there.’

‘Mentioned it already!  You must have written instantly.’

‘I had a few minutes to spare, and I thought I might as well write.’

‘Very well; we will stick to Knollsea,’ said Ethelberta, half in doubt.  ‘Yes—otherwise it will be difficult to see about aunt’s baptismal certificate.  We will hope nobody will take the trouble to pry into our household. . . .  And now, Picotee, I want to ask you something—something very serious.  How would you like me to marry Mr. Neigh?’

Ethelberta could not help laughing with a faint shyness as she asked the question under the searching east ray.  ‘He has asked me to marry him,’ she continued, ‘and I want to know what you would say to such an arrangement.  I don’t mean to imply that the event is certain to take place; but, as a mere supposition, what do you say to it, Picotee?’  Ethelberta was far from putting this matter before Picotee for advice or opinion; but, like all people who have an innate dislike to hole-and-corner policy, she felt compelled to speak of it to some one.

‘I should not like him for you at all,’ said Picotee vehemently.  ‘I would rather you had Mr. Ladywell.’

‘O, don’t name him!’

‘I wouldn’t have Mr. Neigh at any price, nevertheless.  It is about him that I was going to tell you.’  Picotee proceeded to relate Menlove’s account of the story of Ethelberta’s escapade, which had been dragged from Neigh the previous evening by the friend to whom he had related it before he was so enamoured of Ethelberta as to regard that performance as a positive virtue in her.  ‘Nobody was told, or even suspected, who the lady of the anecdote was,’ Picotee concluded; ‘but I knew instantly, of course, and I think it very unfortunate that we ever went to that dreadful ghostly estate of his, Berta.’

Ethelberta’s face heated with mortification.  She had no fear that Neigh had told names or other particulars which might lead to her identification by any friend of his, and she could make allowance for bursts of confidence; but there remained the awkward fact that he himself knew her to be the heroine of the episode.  What annoyed her most was that Neigh could ever have looked upon her indiscretion as a humorous incident, which he certainly must have done at some time or other to account for his telling it.  Had he been angry with her, or sneered at her for going, she could have forgiven him; but to see her manoeuvre in the light of a joke, to use it as illustrating his grim theory of womankind, and neither to like nor to dislike her the more for it from first to last, this was to treat her with a cynicism which was intolerable.  That Neigh’s use of the incident as a stock anecdote ceased long before he had decided to ask her to marry him she had no doubt, but it showed that his love for her was of that sort in which passion makes war upon judgment, and prevails in spite of will.  Moreover, he might have been speaking ironically when he alluded to the act as a virtue in a woman, which seemed the more likely when she remembered his cool bearing towards her in the drawing-room.  Possibly it was an antipathetic reaction, induced by the renewed recollection of her proceeding.

‘I will never marry Mr. Neigh!’ she said, with decision.  ‘That shall settle it.  You need not think over any such contingency, Picotee.  He is one of those horrid men who love with their eyes, the remainder part of him objecting all the time to the feeling; and even if his objections prove the weaker, and the man marries, his general nature conquers again by the time the wedding trip is over, so that the woman is miserable at last, and had better not have had him at all.’

‘That applies still more to Lord Mountclere, to my thinking.  I never saw anything like the look of his eyes upon you.’

‘O no, no—you understand nothing if you say that.  But one thing be sure of, there is no marriage likely to take place between myself and Mr. Neigh.  I have longed for a sound reason for disliking him, and now I have got it.  Well, we will talk no more of this—let us think of the nice little pleasure we have in store—our stay at Knollsea.  There we will be as free as the wind.  And when we are down there, I can drive across to Corvsgate Castle if I wish to attend the Imperial Association meeting, and nobody will know where I came from.  Knollsea is not more than five miles from the Castle, I think.’

Picotee was by this time beginning to yawn, and Ethelberta did not feel nearly so wakeful as she had felt half-an-hour earlier.  Tall and swarthy columns of smoke were now soaring up from the kitchen chimneys around, spreading horizontally when at a great height, and forming a roof of haze which was turning the sun to a copper colour, and by degrees spoiling the sweetness of the new atmosphere that had rolled in from the country during the night, giving it the usual city smell.  The resolve to make this rising the beginning of a long and busy day, which should set them beforehand with the rest of the world, weakened with their growing weariness, and an impulse to lie down just for a quarter of an hour before dressing, ended in a sound sleep that did not relinquish its hold upon them till late in the forenoon.

31. KNOLLSEA—A LOFTY DOWN—A RUINED CASTLE

Knollsea was a seaside village lying snug within two headlands as between a finger and thumb.  Everybody in the parish who was not a boatman was a quarrier, unless he were the gentleman who owned half the property and had been a quarryman, or the other gentleman who owned the other half, and had been to sea.

The knowledge of the inhabitants was of the same special sort as their pursuits.  The quarrymen in white fustian understood practical geology, the laws and accidents of dips, faults, and cleavage, far better than the ways of the world and mammon; the seafaring men in Guernsey frocks had a clearer notion of Alexandria, Constantinople, the Cape, and the Indies than of any inland town in their own country.  This, for them, consisted of a busy portion, the Channel, where they lived and laboured, and a dull portion, the vague unexplored miles of interior at the back of the ports, which they seldom thought of.

Some wives of the village, it is true, had learned to let lodgings, and others to keep shops.  The doors of these latter places were formed of an upper hatch, usually kept open, and a lower hatch, with a bell attached, usually kept shut.  Whenever a stranger went in, he would hear a whispering of astonishment from a back room, after which a woman came forward, looking suspiciously at him as an intruder, and advancing slowly enough to allow her mouth to get clear of the meal she was partaking of.  Meanwhile the people in the back room would stop their knives and forks in absorbed curiosity as to the reason of the stranger’s entry, who by this time feels ashamed of his unwarrantable intrusion into this hermit’s cell, and thinks he must take his hat off.  The woman is quite alarmed at seeing that he is not one of the fifteen native women and children who patronize her, and nervously puts her hand to the side of her face, which she carries slanting.  The visitor finds himself saying what he wants in an apologetic tone, when the woman tells him that they did keep that article once, but do not now; that nobody does, and probably never will again; and as he turns away she looks relieved that the dilemma of having to provide for a stranger has passed off with no worse mishap than disappointing him.

A cottage which stood on a high slope above this townlet and its bay resounded one morning with the notes of a merry company.  Ethelberta had managed to find room for herself and her young relations in the house of one of the boatmen, whose wife attended upon them all.  Captain Flower, the husband, assisted her in the dinner preparations, when he slipped about the house as lightly as a girl and spoke of himself as cook’s mate.  The house was so small that the sailor’s rich voice, developed by shouting in high winds during a twenty years’ experience in the coasting trade, could be heard coming from the kitchen between the chirpings of the children in the parlour.  The furniture of this apartment consisted mostly of the painting of a full-rigged ship, done by a man whom the captain had specially selected for the purpose because he had been seven-and-twenty years at sea before touching a brush, and thereby offered a sufficient guarantee that he understood how to paint a vessel properly.

Before this picture sat Ethelberta in a light linen dress, and with tightly-knotted hair—now again Berta Chickerel as of old—serving out breakfast to the rest of the party, and sometimes lifting her eyes to the outlook from the window, which presented a happy combination of grange scenery with marine.  Upon the irregular slope between the house and the quay was an orchard of aged trees wherein every apple ripening on the boughs presented its rubicund side towards the cottage, because that building chanced to lie upwards in the same direction as the sun.  Under the trees were a few Cape sheep, and over them the stone chimneys of the village below: outside these lay the tanned sails of a ketch or smack, and the violet waters of the bay, seamed and creased by breezes insufficient to raise waves; beyond all a curved wall of cliff, terminating in a promontory, which was flanked by tall and shining obelisks of chalk rising sheer from the trembling blue race beneath.

By one sitting in the room that commanded this prospect, a white butterfly among the apple-trees might be mistaken for the sails of a yacht far away on the sea; and in the evening when the light was dim, what seemed like a fly crawling upon the window-pane would turn out to be a boat in the bay.

When breakfast was over, Ethelberta sat leaning on the window-sill considering her movements for the day.  It was the time fixed for the meeting of the Imperial Association at Corvsgate Castle, the celebrated ruin five miles off, and the meeting had some fascinations for her.  For one thing, she had never been present at a gathering of the kind, although what was left in any shape from the past was her constant interest, because it recalled her to herself and fortified her mind.  Persons waging a harassing social fight are apt in the interest of the combat to forget the smallness of the end in view; and the hints that perishing historical remnants afforded her of the attenuating effects of time even upon great struggles corrected the apparent scale of her own.  She was reminded that in a strife for such a ludicrously small object as the entry of drawing-rooms, winning, equally with losing, is below the zero of the true philosopher’s concern.

There could never be a more excellent reason than this for going to view the meagre stumps remaining from flourishing bygone centuries, and it had weight with Ethelberta this very day; but it would be difficult to state the whole composition of her motive.  The approaching meeting had been one of the great themes at Mr. Doncastle’s dinner-party, and Lord Mountclere, on learning that she was to be at Knollsea, had recommended her attendance at some, if not all of the meetings, as a desirable and exhilarating change after her laborious season’s work in town.  It was pleasant to have won her way so far in high places that her health of body and mind should be thus considered—pleasant, less as personal gratification, than that it casually reflected a proof of her good judgment in a course which everybody among her kindred had condemned by calling a foolhardy undertaking.

And she might go without the restraint of ceremony.  Unconventionality—almost eccentricity—was de rigueur for one who had been first heard of as a poetess; from whose red lips magic romance had since trilled for weeks to crowds of listeners, as from a perennial spring.

So Ethelberta went, after a considerable pondering how to get there without the needless sacrifice either of dignity or cash.  It would be inconsiderate to the children to spend a pound on a brougham when as much as she could spare was wanted for their holiday.  It was almost too far too walk.  She had, however, decided to walk, when she met a boy with a donkey, who offered to lend it to her for three shillings.  The animal was rather sad-looking, but Ethelberta found she could sit upon the pad without discomfort.  Considering that she might pull up some distance short of the castle, and leave the ass at a cottage before joining her four-wheeled friends, she struck the bargain and rode on her way.

This was, first by a path on the shore where the tide dragged huskily up and down the shingle without disturbing it, and thence up the steep crest of land opposite, whereon she lingered awhile to let the ass breathe.  On one of the spires of chalk into which the hill here had been split was perched a cormorant, silent and motionless, with wings spread out to dry in the sun after his morning’s fishing, their white surface shining like mail.  Retiring without disturbing him and turning to the left along the lofty ridge which ran inland, the country on each side lay beneath her like a map, domains behind domains, parishes by the score, harbours, fir-woods, and little inland seas mixing curiously together.  Thence she ambled along through a huge cemetery of barrows, containing human dust from prehistoric times.

Standing on the top of a giant’s grave in this antique land, Ethelberta lifted her eyes to behold two sorts of weather pervading Nature at the same time.  Far below on the right hand it was a fine day, and the silver sunbeams lighted up a many-armed inland sea which stretched round an island with fir-trees and gorse, and amid brilliant crimson heaths wherein white paths and roads occasionally met the eye in dashes and zigzags like flashes of lightning.  Outside, where the broad Channel appeared, a berylline and opalized variegation of ripples, currents, deeps, and shallows, lay as fair under the sun as a New Jerusalem, the shores being of gleaming sand.  Upon the radiant heather bees and butterflies were busy, she knew, and the birds on that side were just beginning their autumn songs.

On the left, quite up to her position, was dark and cloudy weather, shading a valley of heavy greens and browns, which at its further side rose to meet the sea in tall cliffs, suggesting even here at their back how terrible were their aspects seaward in a growling southwest gale.  Here grassed hills rose like knuckles gloved in dark olive, and little plantations between them formed a still deeper and sadder monochrome.  A zinc sky met a leaden sea on this hand, the low wind groaned and whined, and not a bird sang.

The ridge along which Ethelberta rode divided these two climates like a wall; it soon became apparent that they were wrestling for mastery immediately in her pathway.  The issue long remained doubtful, and this being an imaginative hour with her, she watched as typical of her own fortunes how the front of battle swayed—now to the west, flooding her with sun, now to the east, covering her with shade: then the wind moved round to the north, a blue hole appeared in the overhanging cloud, at about the place of the north star; and the sunlight spread on both sides of her.

The towers of the notable ruin to be visited rose out of the furthermost shoulder of the upland as she advanced, its site being the slope and crest of a smoothly nibbled mount at the toe of the ridge she had followed.  When observing the previous uncertainty of the weather on this side Ethelberta had been led to doubt if the meeting would be held here to-day, and she was now strengthened in her opinion that it would not by the total absence of human figures amid the ruins, though the time of appointment was past.  This disposed of another question which had perplexed her: where to find a stable for the ass during the meeting, for she had scarcely liked the idea of facing the whole body of lords and gentlemen upon the animal’s back.  She now decided to retain her seat, ride round the ruin, and go home again, without troubling further about the movements of the Association or acquaintance with the members composing it.

Accordingly Ethelberta crossed the bridge over the moat, and rode under the first archway into the outer ward.  As she had expected, not a soul was here.  The arrow-slits, portcullis-grooves, and staircases met her eye as familiar friends, for in her childhood she had once paid a visit to the spot.  Ascending the green incline and through another arch into the second ward, she still pressed on, till at last the ass was unable to clamber an inch further.  Here she dismounted, and tying him to a stone which projected like a fang from a raw edge of wall, performed the remainder of the ascent on foot.  Once among the towers above, she became so interested in the windy corridors, mildewed dungeons, and the tribe of daws peering invidiously upon her from overhead, that she forgot the flight of time.

Nearly three-quarters of an hour passed before she came out from the immense walls, and looked from an opening to the front over the wide expanse of the outer ward, by which she had ascended.

Ethelberta was taken aback to see there a file of shining carriages, which had arrived during her seclusion in the keep.  From these began to burst a miscellany of many-coloured draperies, blue, buff, pied, and black; they united into one, and crept up the incline like a cloud, which then parted into fragments, dived into old doorways, and lost substance behind projecting piles.  Recognizing in this the ladies and gentlemen of the meeting, her first thought was how to escape, for she was suddenly overcome with dread to meet them all single-handed as she stood.  She drew back and hurried round to the side, as the laughter and voices of the assembly began to be audible, and, more than ever vexed that she could not have fallen in with them in some unobtrusive way, Ethelberta found that they were immediately beneath her.

Venturing to peep forward again, what was her mortification at finding them gathered in a ring, round no object of interest belonging to the ruin, but round her faithful beast, who had loosened himself in some way from the stone, and stood in the middle of a plat of grass, placidly regarding them.

Being now in the teeth of the Association, there was nothing to do but to go on, since, if she did not, the next few steps of their advance would disclose her.  She made the best of it, and began to descend in the broad view of the assembly, from the midst of which proceeded a laugh—‘Hee-hee-hee!’  Ethelberta knew that Lord Mountclere was there.

‘The poor thing has strayed from its owner,’ said one lady, as they all stood eyeing the apparition of the ass.

‘It may belong to some of the villagers,’ said the President in a historical voice: ‘and it may be appropriate to mention that many were kept here in olden times: they were largely used as beasts of burden in victualling the castle previous to the last siege, in the year sixteen hundred and forty-five.’

‘It is very weary, and has come a long way, I think,’ said a lady; adding, in an imaginative tone, ‘the humble creature looks so aged and is so quaintly saddled that we may suppose it to be only an animated relic, of the same date as the other remains.’

By this time Lord Mountclere had noticed Ethelberta’s presence, and straightening himself to ten years younger, he lifted his hat in answer to her smile, and came up jauntily.  It was a good time now to see what the viscount was really like.  He appeared to be about sixty-five, and the dignified aspect which he wore to a gazer at a distance became depreciated to jocund slyness upon nearer view, when the small type could be read between the leading lines.  Then it could be seen that his upper lip dropped to a point in the middle, as if impressing silence upon his too demonstrative lower one.  His right and left profiles were different, one corner of his mouth being more compressed than the other, producing a deep line thence downwards to the side of his chin.  Each eyebrow rose obliquely outwards and upwards, and was thus far above the little eye, shining with the clearness of a pond that has just been able to weather the heats of summer.  Below this was a preternaturally fat jowl, which, by thrusting against cheeks and chin, caused the arch old mouth to be almost buried at the corners.

A few words of greeting passed, and Ethelberta told him how she was fearing to meet them all, united and primed with their morning’s knowledge as they appeared to be.

‘Well, we have not done much yet,’ said Lord Mountclere.  ‘As for myself, I have given no thought at all to our day’s work.  I had not forgotten your promise to attend, if you could possibly drive across, and—hee-hee-hee!—I have frequently looked towards the hill where the road descends. . . .  Will you now permit me to introduce some of my party—as many of them as you care to know by name?  I think they would all like to speak to you.’

Ethelberta then found herself nominally made known to ten or a dozen ladies and gentlemen who had wished for special acquaintance with her.  She stood there, as all women stand who have made themselves remarkable by their originality, or devotion to any singular cause, as a person freed of her hampering and inconvenient sex, and, by virtue of her popularity, unfettered from the conventionalities of manner prescribed by custom for household womankind.  The charter to move abroad unchaperoned, which society for good reasons grants only to women of three sorts—the famous, the ministering, and the improper—Ethelberta was in a fair way to make splendid use of: instead of walking in protected lanes she experienced that luxury of isolation which normally is enjoyed by men alone, in conjunction with the attention naturally bestowed on a woman young and fair.  Among the presentations were Mr. and Mrs. Tynn, member and member’s mainspring for North Wessex; Sir Cyril and Lady Blandsbury; Lady Jane Joy; and the Honourable Edgar Mountclere, the viscount’s brother.  There also hovered near her the learned Doctor Yore; Mr. Small, a profound writer, who never printed his works; the Reverend Mr. Brook, rector; the Very Reverend Dr. Taylor, dean; and the undoubtedly Reverend Mr. Tinkleton, Nonconformist, who had slipped into the fold by chance.

These and others looked with interest at Ethelberta: the old county fathers hard, as at a questionable town phenomenon, the county sons tenderly, as at a pretty creature, and the county daughters with great admiration, as at a lady reported by their mammas to be no better than she should be.  It will be seen that Ethelberta was the sort of woman that well-rooted local people might like to look at on such a free and friendly occasion as an archaeological meeting, where, to gratify a pleasant whim, the picturesque form of acquaintance is for the nonce preferred to the useful, the spirits being so brisk as to swerve from strict attention to the select and sequent gifts of heaven, blood and acres, to consider for an idle moment the subversive Mephistophelian endowment, brains.

‘Our progress in the survey of the castle has not been far as yet,’ Lord Mountclere resumed; ‘indeed, we have only just arrived, the weather this morning being so unsettled.  When you came up we were engaged in a preliminary study of the poor animal you see there: how it could have got up here we cannot understand.’

He pointed as he spoke to the donkey which had brought Ethelberta thither, whereupon she was silent, and gazed at her untoward beast as if she had never before beheld him.

The ass looked at Ethelberta as though he would say, ‘Why don’t you own me, after safely bringing you over those weary hills?’  But the pride and emulation which had made her what she was would not permit her, as the most lovely woman there, to take upon her own shoulders the ridicule that had already been cast upon the ass.  Had he been young and gaily caparisoned, she might have done it; but his age, the clumsy trappings of rustic make, and his needy woful look of hard servitude, were too much to endure.

‘Many come and picnic here,’ she said serenely, ‘and the animal may have been left till they return from some walk.’

‘True,’ said Lord Mountclere, without the slightest suspicion of the truth.  The humble ass hung his head in his usual manner, and it demanded little fancy from Ethelberta to imagine that he despised her.  And then her mind flew back to her history and extraction, to her father—perhaps at that moment inventing a private plate-powder in an underground pantry—and with a groan at her inconsistency in being ashamed of the ass, she said in her heart, ‘My God, what a thing am I!’

They then all moved on to another part of the castle, the viscount busying himself round and round her person like the head scraper at a pig-killing; and as they went indiscriminately mingled, jesting lightly or talking in earnest, she beheld ahead of her the form of Neigh among the rest.

Now, there could only be one reason on earth for Neigh’s presence—her remark that she might attend—for Neigh took no more interest in antiquities than in the back of the moon.  Ethelberta was a little flurried; perhaps he had come to scold her, or to treat her badly in that indefinable way of his by which he could make a woman feel as nothing without any direct act at all.  She was afraid of him, and, determining to shun him, was thankful that Lord Mountclere was near, to take off the edge of Neigh’s manner towards her if he approached.

‘Do you know in what part of the ruins the lecture is to be given?’ she said to the viscount.

‘Wherever you like,’ he replied gallantly.  ‘Do you propose a place, and I will get Dr. Yore to adopt it.  Say, shall it be here, or where they are standing?’

How could Ethelberta refrain from exercising a little power when it was put into her hands in this way?

‘Let it be here,’ she said, ‘if it makes no difference to the meeting.’

‘It shall be,’ said Lord Mountclere.

And then the lively old nobleman skipped like a roe to the President and to Dr. Yore, who was to read the paper on the castle, and they soon appeared coming back to where the viscount’s party and Ethelberta were beginning to seat themselves.  The bulk of the company followed, and Dr. Yore began.

He must have had a countenance of leather—as, indeed, from his colour he appeared to have—to stand unmoved in his position, and read, and look up to give explanations, without a change of muscle, under the dozens of bright eyes that were there converged upon him, like the sticks of a fan, from the ladies who sat round him in a semicircle upon the grass.  However, he went on calmly, and the women sheltered themselves from the heat with their umbrellas and sunshades, their ears lulled by the hum of insects, and by the drone of the doctor’s voice.  The reader buzzed on with the history of the castle, tracing its development from a mound with a few earthworks to its condition in Norman times; he related monkish marvels connected with the spot; its resistance under Matilda to Stephen, its probable shape while a residence of King John, and the sad story of the Damsel of Brittany, sister of his victim Arthur, who was confined here in company with the two daughters of Alexander, king of Scotland.  He went on to recount the confinement of Edward II. herein, previous to his murder at Berkeley, the gay doings in the reign of Elizabeth, and so downward through time to the final overthrow of the stern old pile.  As he proceeded, the lecturer pointed with his finger at the various features appertaining to the date of his story, which he told with splendid vigour when he had warmed to his work, till his narrative, particularly in the conjectural and romantic parts, where it became coloured rather by the speaker’s imagination than by the pigments of history, gathered together the wandering thoughts of all.  It was easy for him then to meet those fair concentred eyes, when the sunshades were thrown back, and complexions forgotten, in the interest of the history.  The doctor’s face was then no longer criticized as a rugged boulder, a dried fig, an oak carving, or a walnut shell, but became blotted out like a mountain top in a shining haze by the nebulous pictures conjured by his tale.

Then the lecture ended, and questions were asked, and individuals of the company wandered at will, the light dresses of the ladies sweeping over the hot grass and brushing up thistledown which had hitherto lain quiescent, so that it rose in a flight from the skirts of each like a comet’s tail.

Some of Lord Mountclere’s party, including himself and Ethelberta, wandered now into a cool dungeon, partly open to the air overhead, where long arms of ivy hung between their eyes and the white sky.  While they were here, Lady Jane Joy and some other friends of the viscount told Ethelberta that they were probably coming on to Knollsea.

She instantly perceived that getting into close quarters in that way might be very inconvenient, considering the youngsters she had under her charge, and straightway decided upon a point that she had debated for several days—a visit to her aunt in Normandy.  In London it had been a mere thought, but the Channel had looked so tempting from its brink that the journey was virtually fixed as soon as she reached Knollsea, and found that a little pleasure steamer crossed to Cherbourg once a week during the summer, so that she would not have to enter the crowded routes at all.

‘I am afraid I shall not see you in Knollsea,’ she said.  ‘I am about to go to Cherbourg and then to Rouen.’

‘How sorry I am.  When do you leave?’

‘At the beginning of next week,’ said Ethelberta, settling the time there and then.

‘Did I hear you say that you were going to Cherbourg and Rouen?’ Lord Mountclere inquired.

‘I think to do so,’ said Ethelberta.

‘I am going to Normandy myself,’ said a voice behind her, and without turning she knew that Neigh was standing there.

They next went outside, and Lord Mountclere offered Ethelberta his arm on the ground of assisting her down the burnished grass slope.  Ethelberta, taking pity upon him, took it; but the assistance was all on her side; she stood like a statue amid his slips and totterings, some of which taxed her strength heavily, and her ingenuity more, to appear as the supported and not the supporter.  The incident brought Neigh still further from his retirement, and she learnt that he was one of a yachting party which had put in at Knollsea that morning; she was greatly relieved to find that he was just now on his way to London, whence he would probably proceed on his journey abroad.

Ethelberta adhered as well as she could to her resolve that Neigh should not speak with her alone, but by dint of perseverance he did manage to address her without being overheard.

‘Will you give me an answer?’ said Neigh.  ‘I have come on purpose.’

‘I cannot just now.  I have been led to doubt you.’

‘Doubt me?  What new wrong have I done?’

‘Spoken jestingly of my visit to Farnfield.’

‘Good ---!  I did not speak or think of you.  When I told that incident I had no idea who the lady was—I did not know it was you till two days later, and I at once held my tongue.  I vow to you upon my soul and life that what I say is true.  How shall I prove my truth better than by my errand here?’

‘Don’t speak of this now.  I am so occupied with other things.  I am going to Rouen, and will think of it on my way.’

‘I am going there too.  When do you go?’

‘I shall be in Rouen next Wednesday, I hope.’

‘May I ask where?’

‘Hôtel Beau Séjour.’

‘Will you give me an answer there?  I can easily call upon you.  It is now a month and more since you first led me to hope—’

‘I did not lead you to hope—at any rate clearly.’

‘Indirectly you did.  And although I am willing to be as considerate as any man ought to be in giving you time to think over the question, there is a limit to my patience.  Any necessary delay I will put up with, but I won’t be trifled with.  I hate all nonsense, and can’t stand it.’

‘Indeed.  Good morning.’

‘But Mrs. Petherwin—just one word.’

‘I have nothing to say.’

‘I will meet you at Rouen for an answer.  I would meet you in Hades for the matter of that.  Remember this: next Wednesday, if I live, I shall call upon you at Rouen.’

She did not say nay.

‘May I?’ he added.

‘If you will.’

‘But say it shall be an appointment?’

‘Very well.’

Lord Mountclere was by this time toddling towards them to ask if they would come on to his house, Enckworth Court, not very far distant, to lunch with the rest of the party.  Neigh, having already arranged to go on to town that afternoon, was obliged to decline, and Ethelberta thought fit to do the same, idly asking Lord Mountclere if Enckworth Court lay in the direction of a gorge that was visible where they stood.

‘No; considerably to the left,’ he said.  ‘The opening you are looking at would reveal the sea if it were not for the trees that block the way.  Ah, those trees have a history; they are half-a-dozen elms which I planted myself when I was a boy.  How time flies!’

‘It is unfortunate they stand just so as to cover the blue bit of sea.  That addition would double the value of the view from here.’

‘You would prefer the blue sea to the trees?’

‘In that particular spot I should; they might have looked just as well, and yet have hidden nothing worth seeing.  The narrow slit would have been invaluable there.’

‘They shall fall before the sun sets, in deference to your opinion,’ said Lord Mountclere.

‘That would be rash indeed,’ said Ethelberta, laughing, ‘when my opinion on such a point may be worth nothing whatever.’

‘Where no other is acted upon, it is practically the universal one,’ he replied gaily.

And then Ethelberta’s elderly admirer bade her adieu, and away the whole party drove in a long train over the hills towards the valley wherein stood Enckworth Court.  Ethelberta’s carriage was supposed by her friends to have been left at the village inn, as were many others, and her retiring from view on foot attracted no notice.

She watched them out of sight, and she also saw the rest depart—those who, their interest in archaeology having begun and ended with this spot, had, like herself, declined the hospitable viscount’s invitation, and started to drive or walk at once home again.  Thereupon the castle was quite deserted except by Ethelberta, the ass, and the jackdaws, now floundering at ease again in and about the ivy of the keep.

Not wishing to enter Knollsea till the evening shades were falling, she still walked amid the ruins, examining more leisurely some points which the stress of keeping herself companionable would not allow her to attend to while the assemblage was present.  At the end of the survey, being somewhat weary with her clambering, she sat down on the slope commanding the gorge where the trees grew, to make a pencil sketch of the landscape as it was revealed between the ragged walls.  Thus engaged she weighed the circumstances of Lord Mountclere’s invitation, and could not be certain if it were prudishness or simple propriety in herself which had instigated her to refuse.  She would have liked the visit for many reasons, and if Lord Mountclere had been anybody but a remarkably attentive old widower, she would have gone.  As it was, it had occurred to her that there was something in his tone which should lead her to hesitate.  Were any among the elderly or married ladies who had appeared upon the ground in a detached form as she had done—and many had appeared thus—invited to Enckworth; and if not, why were they not?  That Lord Mountclere admired her there was no doubt, and for this reason it behoved her to be careful.  His disappointment at parting from her was, in one aspect, simply laughable, from its odd resemblance to the unfeigned sorrow of a boy of fifteen at a first parting from his first love; in another aspect it caused reflection; and she thought again of his curiosity about her doings for the remainder of the summer.

* * * * *

While she sketched and thought thus, the shadows grew longer, and the sun low.  And then she perceived a movement in the gorge.  One of the trees forming the curtain across it began to wave strangely: it went further to one side, and fell. Where the tree had stood was now a rent in the foliage, and through the narrow rent could be seen the distant sea.

Ethelberta uttered a soft exclamation.  It was not caused by the surprise she had felt, nor by the intrinsic interest of the sight, nor by want of comprehension.  It was a sudden realization of vague things hitherto dreamed of from a distance only—a sense of novel power put into her hands without request or expectation.  A landscape was to be altered to suit her whim.  She had in her lifetime moved essentially larger mountains, but they had seemed of far less splendid material than this; for it was the nature of the gratification rather than its magnitude which enchanted the fancy of a woman whose poetry, in spite of her necessities, was hardly yet extinguished.  But there was something more, with which poetry had little to do.  Whether the opinion of any pretty woman in England was of more weight with Lord Mountclere than memories of his boyhood, or whether that distinction was reserved for her alone; this was a point that she would have liked to know.

The enjoyment of power in a new element, an enjoyment somewhat resembling in kind that which is given by a first ride or swim, held Ethelberta to the spot, and she waited, but sketched no more.  Another tree-top swayed and vanished as before, and the slit of sea was larger still.  Her mind and eye were so occupied with this matter that, sitting in her nook, she did not observe a thin young man, his boots white with the dust of a long journey on foot, who arrived at the castle by the valley-road from Knollsea.  He looked awhile at the ruin, and, skirting its flank instead of entering by the great gateway, climbed up the scarp and walked in through a breach.  After standing for a moment among the walls, now silent and apparently empty, with a disappointed look he descended the slope, and proceeded along on his way.

Ethelberta, who was in quite another part of the castle, saw the black spot diminishing to the size of a fly as he receded along the dusty road, and soon after she descended on the other side, where she remounted the ass, and ambled homeward as she had come, in no bright mood.  What, seeing the precariousness of her state, was the day’s triumph worth after all, unless, before her beauty abated, she could ensure her position against the attacks of chance?

   ‘To be thus is nothing;
But to be safely thus.’

—she said it more than once on her journey that day.

On entering the sitting-room of their cot up the hill she found it empty, and from a change perceptible in the position of small articles of furniture, something unusual seemed to have taken place in her absence.  The dwelling being of that sort in which whatever goes on in one room is audible through all the rest, Picotee, who was upstairs, heard the arrival and came down.  Picotee’s face was rosed over with the brilliance of some excitement.  ‘What do you think I have to tell you, Berta?’ she said.

‘I have no idea,’ said her sister.  ‘Surely,’ she added, her face intensifying to a wan sadness, ‘Mr. Julian has not been here?’

‘Yes,’ said Picotee.  ‘And we went down to the sands—he, and Myrtle, and Georgina, and Emmeline, and I—and Cornelia came down when she had put away the dinner.  And then we dug wriggles out of the sand with Myrtle’s spade: we got such a lot, and had such fun; they are in a dish in the kitchen.  Mr. Julian came to see you; but at last he could wait no longer, and when I told him you were at the meeting in the castle ruins he said he would try to find you there on his way home, if he could get there before the meeting broke up.’

‘Then it was he I saw far away on the road—yes, it must have been.’  She remained in gloomy reverie a few moments, and then said, ‘Very well—let it be.  Picotee, get me some tea: I do not want dinner.’

But the news of Christopher’s visit seemed to have taken away her appetite for tea also, and after sitting a little while she flung herself down upon the couch, and told Picotee that she had settled to go and see their aunt Charlotte.

‘I am going to write to Sol and Dan to ask them to meet me there,’ she added.  ‘I want them, if possible, to see Paris.  It will improve them greatly in their trades, I am thinking, if they can see the kinds of joinery and decoration practised in France.  They agreed to go, if I should wish it, before we left London.  You, of course, will go as my maid.’

Picotee gazed upon the sea with a crestfallen look, as if she would rather not cross it in any capacity just then.

‘It would scarcely be worth going to the expense of taking me, would it?’ she said.

The cause of Picotee’s sudden sense of economy was so plain that her sister smiled; but young love, however foolish, is to a thinking person far too tragic a power for ridicule; and Ethelberta forbore, going on as if Picotee had not spoken: ‘I must have you with me.  I may be seen there: so many are passing through Rouen at this time of the year.  Cornelia can take excellent care of the children while we are gone.  I want to get out of England, and I will get out of England.  There is nothing but vanity and vexation here.’

‘I am sorry you were away when he called,’ said Picotee gently.

‘O, I don’t mean that.  I wish there were no different ranks in the world, and that contrivance were not a necessary faculty to have at all.  Well, we are going to cross by the little steamer that puts in here, and we are going on Monday.’  She added in another minute, ‘What had Mr. Julian to tell us that he came here?  How did he find us out?’

‘I mentioned that we were coming here in my letter to Faith.  Mr. Julian says that perhaps he and his sister may also come for a few days before the season is over.  I should like to see Miss Julian again.  She is such a nice girl.’

‘Yes.’  Ethelberta played with her hair, and looked at the ceiling as she reclined.  ‘I have decided after all,’ she said, ‘that it will be better to take Cornelia as my maid, and leave you here with the children.  Cornelia is stronger as a companion than you, and she will be delighted to go.  Do you think you are competent to keep Myrtle and Georgina out of harm’s way?’

‘O yes—I will be exceedingly careful,’ said Picotee, with great vivacity.  ‘And if there is time I can go on teaching them a little.’  Then Picotee caught Ethelberta’s eye, and colouring red, sank down beside her sister, whispering, ‘I know why it is!  But if you would rather have me with you I will go, and not once wish to stay.’

Ethelberta looked as if she knew all about that, and said, ‘Of course there will be no necessity to tell the Julians about my departure until they have fixed the time for coming, and cannot alter their minds.’

The sound of the children with Cornelia, and their appearance outside the window, pushing between the fuchsia bushes which overhung the path, put an end to this dialogue; they entered armed with buckets and spades, a very moist and sandy aspect pervading them as far up as the high-water mark of their clothing, and began to tell Ethelberta of the wonders of the deep.

32. A ROOM IN ENCKWORTH COURT

‘Are you sure the report is true?’

‘I am sure that what I say is true, my lord; but it is hardly to be called a report.  It is a secret, known at present to nobody but myself and Mrs. Doncastle’s maid.’

The speaker was Lord Mountclere’s trusty valet, and the conversation was between him and the viscount in a dressing-room at Enckworth Court, on the evening after the meeting of archaeologists at Corvsgate Castle.

‘H’m-h’m; the daughter of a butler.  Does Mrs. Doncastle know of this yet, or Mr. Neigh, or any of their friends?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘You are quite positive?’

‘Quite positive.  I was, by accident, the first that Mrs. Menlove named the matter to, and I told her it might be much to her advantage if she took particular care it should go no further.’

‘Mrs. Menlove!  Who’s she?’

‘The lady’s-maid at Mrs. Doncastle’s, my lord.’

‘O, ah—of course.  You may leave me now, Tipman.’  Lord Mountclere remained in thought for a moment.  ‘A clever little puss, to hoodwink us all like this—hee-hee!’ he murmured.  ‘Her education—how finished; and her beauty—so seldom that I meet with such a woman.  Cut down my elms to please a butler’s daughter—what a joke—certainly a good joke!  To interest me in her on the right side instead of the wrong was strange.  But it can be made to change sides—hee-hee!—it can be made to change sides!  Tipman!’

Tipman came forward from the doorway.

‘Will you take care that that piece of gossip you mentioned to me is not repeated in this house?  I strongly disapprove of talebearing of any sort, and wish to hear no more of this.  Such stories are never true.  Answer me—do you hear?  Such stories are never true.’

‘I beg pardon, but I think your lordship will find this one true,’ said the valet quietly.

‘Then where did she get her manners and education?  Do you know?’

‘I do not, my lord.  I suppose she picked ’em up by her wits.’

‘Never mind what you suppose,’ said the old man impatiently.  ‘Whenever I ask a question of you tell me what you know, and no more.’

‘Quite so, my lord.  I beg your lordship’s pardon for supposing.’

‘H’m-h’m.  Have the fashion-books and plates arrived yet?’

‘Le Follet has, my lord; but not the others.’

‘Let me have it at once.  Always bring it to me at once.  Are there any handsome ones this time?’

‘They are much the same class of female as usual, I think, my lord,’ said Tipman, fetching the paper and laying it before him.

‘Yes, they are,’ said the viscount, leaning back and scrutinizing the faces of the women one by one, and talking softly to himself in a way that had grown upon him as his age increased.  ‘Yet they are very well: that one with her shoulder turned is pure and charming—the brown-haired one will pass.  All very harmless and innocent, but without character; no soul, or inspiration, or eloquence of eye.  What an eye was hers!  There is not a girl among them so beautiful. . . .  Tipman!  Come and take it away.  I don’t think I will subscribe to these papers any longer—how long have I subscribed?  Never mind—I take no interest in these things, and I suppose I must give them up.  What white article is that I see on the floor yonder?’

‘I can see nothing, my lord.’

‘Yes, yes, you can.  At the other end of the room.  It is a white handkerchief.  Bring it to me.’

‘I beg pardon, my lord, but I cannot see any white handkerchief.  Whereabouts does your lordship mean?’

‘There in the corner.  If it is not a handkerchief, what is it?  Walk along till you come to it—that is it; now a little further—now your foot is against it.’

‘O that—it is not anything.  It is the light reflected against the skirting, so that it looks like a white patch of something—that is all.’

‘H’m-hm.  My eyes—how weak they are!  I am getting old, that’s what it is: I am an old man.’

‘O no, my lord.’

‘Yes, an old man.’

‘Well, we shall all be old some day, and so will your lordship, I suppose; but as yet—’

‘I tell you I am an old man!’

‘Yes, my lord—I did not mean to contradict.  An old man in one sense—old in a young man’s sense, but not in a house-of-parliament or historical sense.  A little oldish—I meant that, my lord.’

‘I may be an old man in one sense or in another sense in your mind; but let me tell you there are men older than I—’

‘Yes, so there are, my lord.’

‘People may call me what they please, and you may be impertinent enough to repeat to me what they say, but let me tell you I am not a very old man after all.  I am not an old man.’

‘Old in knowledge of the world I meant, my lord, not in years.’

‘Well, yes.  Experience of course I cannot be without.  And I like what is beautiful.  Tipman, you must go to Knollsea; don’t send, but go yourself, as I wish nobody else to be concerned in this.  Go to Knollsea, and find out when the steamboat for Cherbourg starts; and when you have done that, I shall want you to send Taylor to me.  I wish Captain Strong to bring the Fawn round into Knollsea Bay.  Next week I may want you to go to Cherbourg in the yacht with me—if the Channel is pretty calm—and then perhaps to Rouen and Paris.  But I will speak of that to-morrow.’

‘Very good, my lord.’

‘Meanwhile I recommend that you and Mrs. Menlove repeat nothing you may have heard concerning the lady you just now spoke of.  Here is a slight present for Mrs. Menlove; and accept this for yourself.’  He handed money.

‘Your lordship may be sure we will not,’ the valet replied.

33. THE ENGLISH CHANNEL—NORMANDY

On Monday morning the little steamer Speedwell made her appearance round the promontory by Knollsea Bay, to take in passengers for the transit to Cherbourg.  Breezes the freshest that could blow without verging on keenness flew over the quivering deeps and shallows; and the sunbeams pierced every detail of barrow, path and rabbit-run upon the lofty convexity of down and waste which shut in Knollsea from the world to the west.

They left the pier at eight o’clock, taking at first a short easterly course to avoid a sinister ledge of limestones jutting from the water like crocodile’s teeth, which first obtained notoriety in English history through being the spot whereon a formidable Danish fleet went to pieces a thousand years ago.  At the moment that the Speedwell turned to enter upon the direct course, a schooner-yacht, whose sheets gleamed like bridal satin, loosed from a remoter part of the bay; continuing to bear off, she cut across the steamer’s wake, and took a course almost due southerly, which was precisely that of the Speedwell.  The wind was very favourable for the yacht, blowing a few points from north in a steady pressure on her quarter, and, having been built with every modern appliance that shipwrights could offer, the schooner found no difficulty in getting abreast, and even ahead, of the steamer, as soon as she had escaped the shelter of the hills.

The more or less parallel courses of the vessels continued for some time without causing any remark among the people on board the Speedwell.  At length one noticed the fact, and another; and then it became the general topic of conversation in the group upon the bridge, where Ethelberta, her hair getting frizzed and her cheeks carnationed by the wind, sat upon a camp-stool looking towards the prow.

‘She is bound for Guernsey,’ said one.  ‘In half-an-hour she will put about for a more westerly course, you’ll see.’

‘She is not for Guernsey or anywhere that way,’ said an acquaintance, looking through his glass.  ‘If she is out for anything more than a morning cruise, she is bound for our port.  I should not wonder if she is crossing to get stocked, as most of them do, to save the duty on her wine and provisions.’

‘Do you know whose yacht it is?’

‘I do not.’

Ethelberta looked at the light leaning figure of the pretty schooner, which seemed to skate along upon her bilge and make white shavings of all the sea that touched her.  She at first imagined that this might be the yacht Neigh had arrived in at the end of the previous week, for she knew that he came as one of a yachting party, and she had noticed no other boat of that sort in the bay since his arrival.  But as all his party had gone ashore and not yet returned, she was surprised to see the supposed vessel here.  To add to her perplexity, she could not be positive, now that it came to a real nautical query, whether the craft of Neigh’s friends had one mast or two, for she had caught but a fragmentary view of the topsail over the apple-trees.

‘Is that the yacht which has been lying at Knollsea for the last few days?’ she inquired of the master of the Speedwell, as soon as she had an opportunity.

The master warmed beneath his copper-coloured rind.  ‘O no, miss; that one you saw was a cutter—a smaller boat altogether,’ he replied.  ‘Built on the sliding-keel principle, you understand, miss—and red below her water-line, if you noticed.  This is Lord Mountclere’s yacht—the Fawn.  You might have seen her re’ching in round Old-Harry Rock this morning afore we started.’

‘Lord Mountclere’s?’

‘Yes—a nobleman of this neighbourhood.  But he don’t do so much at yachting as he used to in his younger days.  I believe he’s aboard this morning, however.’

Ethelberta now became more absorbed than ever in their ocean comrade, and watched its motions continually.  The schooner was considerably in advance of them by this time, and seemed to be getting by degrees out of their course.  She wondered if Lord Mountclere could be really going to Cherbourg: if so, why had he said nothing about the trip to her when she spoke of her own approaching voyage thither?  The yacht changed its character in her eyes; losing the indefinite interest of the unknown, it acquired the charm of a riddle on motives, of which the alternatives were, had Lord Mountclere’s journey anything to do with her own, or had it not?  Common probability pointed to the latter supposition; but the time of starting, the course of the yacht, and recollections of Lord Mountclere’s homage, suggested the more extraordinary possibility.

She went across to Cornelia.  ‘The man who handed us on board—didn’t I see him speaking to you this morning?’ she said.

‘O yes,’ said Cornelia.  ‘He asked if my mistress was the popular Mrs. Petherwin?

‘And you told him, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘What made you do that, Cornelia?’

‘I thought I might: I couldn’t help it.  When I went through the toll-gate, such a gentlemanly-looking man asked me if he should help me to carry the things to the end of the pier; and as we went on together he said he supposed me to be Mrs. Petherwin’s maid.  I said, “Yes.”  The two men met afterwards, so there would ha’ been no good in my denying it to one of ’em.’

‘Who was this gentlemanly person?’

‘I asked the other man that, and he told me one of Lord Mountclere’s upper servants.  I knew then there was no harm in having been civil to him.  He is well-mannered, and talks splendid language.’

‘That yacht you see on our right hand is Lord Mountclere’s property.  If I do not mistake, we shall have her closer by-and-by, and you may meet your gentlemanly friend again.  Be careful how you talk to him.’

Ethelberta sat down, thought of the meeting at Corvsgate Castle, of the dinner-party at Mr. Doncastle’s, of the strange position she had there been in, and then of her father.  She suddenly reproached herself for thoughtlessness; for in her pocket lay a letter from him, which she had taken from the postman that morning at the moment of coming from the door, and in the hurry of embarking had forgotten ever since.  Opening it quickly, she read:—

‘MY DEAR ETHELBERTA,—Your letter reached me yesterday, and I called round at Exonbury Crescent in the afternoon, as you wished.  Everything is going on right there, and you have no occasion to be anxious about them.  I do not leave town for another week or two, and by the time I am gone Sol and Dan will have returned from Paris, if your mother and Gwendoline want any help: so that you need not hurry back on their account.

‘I have something else to tell you, which is not quite so satisfactory, and it is this that makes me write at once; but do not be alarmed.  It began in this way.  A few nights after the dinner-party here I was determined to find out if there was any truth in what you had been told about that boy, and having seen Menlove go out as usual after dark, I followed her.  Sure enough, when she had got into the park, up came master Joe, smoking a cigar.  As soon as they had met I went towards them, and Menlove, seeing somebody draw nigh, began to edge off, when the blockhead said, “Never mind, my love, it is only the old man.”  Being very provoked with both of them, though she was really the most to blame, I gave him some smart cuts across the shoulders with my cane, and told him to go home, which he did with a flea in his ear, the rascal.  I believe I have cured his courting tricks for some little time.

‘Well, Menlove then walked by me, quite cool, as if she were merely a lady passing by chance at the time, which provoked me still more, knowing the whole truth of it, and I could not help turning upon her and saying, “You, madam, ought to be served the same way.”  She replied in very haughty words, and I walked away, saying that I had something better to do than argue with a woman of her character at that hour of the evening.  This so set her up that she followed me home, marched into my pantry, and told me that if I had been more careful about my manners in calling her a bad character, it might have been better both for me and my stuck-up daughter—a daw in eagle’s plumes—and so on.  Now it seems that she must have coaxed something out of Joey about you—for what lad in the world could be a match for a woman of her experience and arts!  I hope she will do you no serious damage; but I tell you the whole state of affairs exactly as they are, that you may form your own opinions.  After all, there is no real disgrace, for none of us have ever done wrong, but have worked honestly for a living.  However, I will let you know if anything serious really happens.’

This was all that her father said on the matter, the letter concluding with messages to the children and directions from their mother with regard to their clothes.

Ethelberta felt very distinctly that she was in a strait; the old impression that, unless her position were secured soon, it never would be secured, returned with great force.  A doubt whether it was worth securing would have been very strong ere this, had not others besides herself been concerned in her fortunes.  She looked up from her letter, and beheld the pertinacious yacht; it led her up to a conviction that therein lay a means and an opportunity.

Nothing further of importance occurred in crossing.  Ethelberta’s head ached after a while, and Cornelia’s healthy cheeks of red were found to have diminished their colour to the size of a wafer and the quality of a stain.  The Speedwell entered the breakwater at Cherbourg to find the schooner already in the roadstead; and by the time the steamer was brought up Ethelberta could see the men on board the yacht clewing up and making things snug in a way from which she inferred that they were not going to leave the harbour again that day.  With the aspect of a fair galleon that could easily out-manoeuvre her persevering buccaneer, Ethelberta passed alongside.  Could it be possible that Lord Mountclere had on her account fixed this day for his visit across the Channel?

‘Well, I would rather be haunted by him than by Mr. Neigh,’ she said; and began laying her plans so as to guard against inconvenient surprises.

The next morning Ethelberta was at the railway station, taking tickets for herself and Cornelia, when she saw an old yet sly and somewhat merry-faced Englishman a little way off.  He was attended by a younger man, who appeared to be his valet.

‘I will exchange one of these tickets,’ she said to the clerk, and having done so she went to Cornelia to inform her that it would after all be advisable for them to travel separate, adding, ‘Lord Mountclere is in the station, and I think he is going on by our train.  Remember, you are my maid again now.  Is not that the gentlemanly man who assisted you yesterday?’  She signified the valet as she spoke.

‘It is,’ said Cornelia.

When the passengers were taking their seats, and Ethelberta was thinking whether she might not after all enter a second-class with Cornelia instead of sitting solitary in a first because of an old man’s proximity, she heard a shuffling at her elbow, and the next moment found that he was overtly observing her as if he had not done so in secret at all.  She at once gave him an unsurprised gesture of recognition.  ‘I saw you some time ago; what a singular coincidence,’ she said.

‘A charming one,’ said Lord Mountclere, smiling a half-minute smile, and making as if he would take his hat off and would not quite.  ‘Perhaps we must not call it coincidence entirely,’ he continued; ‘my journey, which I have contemplated for some time, was not fixed this week altogether without a thought of your presence on the road—hee-hee!  Do you go far to-day?’

‘As far as Caen,’ said Ethelberta.

‘Ah!  That’s the end of my day’s journey, too,’ said Lord Mountclere.  They parted and took their respective places, Lord Mountclere choosing a compartment next to the one Ethelberta was entering, and not, as she had expected, attempting to join her.

Now she had instantly fancied when the viscount was speaking that there were signs of some departure from his former respectful manner towards her; and an enigma lay in that.  At their earlier meetings he had never ventured upon a distinct coupling of himself and herself as he had done in his broad compliment to-day—if compliment it could be called.  She was not sure that he did not exceed his license in telling her deliberately that he had meant to hover near her in a private journey which she was taking without reference to him.  She did not object to the act, but to the avowal of the act; and, being as sensitive as a barometer on signs affecting her social condition, it darted upon Ethelberta for one little moment that he might possibly have heard a word or two about her being nothing more nor less than one of a tribe of thralls; hence his freedom of manner.  Certainly a plain remark of that sort was exactly what a susceptible peer might be supposed to say to a pretty woman of far inferior degree.  A rapid redness filled her face at the thought that he might have smiled upon her as upon a domestic whom he was disposed to chuck under the chin.  ‘But no,’ she said.  ‘He would never have taken the trouble to follow and meet with me had he learnt to think me other than a lady.  It is extremity of devotion—that’s all.’

It was not Ethelberta’s inexperience, but that her conception of self precluded such an association of ideas, which led her to dismiss the surmise that his attendance could be inspired by a motive beyond that of paying her legitimate attentions as a co-ordinate with him and his in the social field.  Even if he only meant flirtation, she read it as of that sort from which courtship with an eye to matrimony differs only in degree.  Hence, she thought, his interest in her was not likely, under the ordinary influences of caste feeling, to continue longer than while he was kept in ignorance of her consanguinity with a stock proscribed.  She sighed at the anticipated close of her full-feathered towering when her ties and bonds should be uncovered.  She might have seen matters in a different light, and sighed more.  But in the stir of the moment it escaped her thought that ignorance of her position, and a consequent regard for her as a woman of good standing, would have prevented his indulgence in any course which was open to the construction of being disrespectful.

Valognes, Carentan, Isigny, Bayeux, were passed, and the train drew up at Caen.  Ethelberta’s intention had been to stay here for one night, but having learnt from Lord Mountclere, as previously described, that this was his destination, she decided to go on.  On turning towards the carriage after a few minutes of promenading at the Caen station, she was surprised to perceive that Lord Mountclere, who had alighted as if to leave, was still there.

They spoke again to each other.  ‘I find I have to go further,’ he suddenly said, when she had chatted with him a little time.  And beckoning to the man who was attending to his baggage, he directed the things to be again placed in the train.

Time passed, and they changed at the next junction.  When Ethelberta entered a carriage on the branch line to take her seat for the remainder of the journey, there sat the viscount in the same division.  He explained that he was going to Rouen.

Ethelberta came to a quick resolution.  Her audacity, like that of a child getting nearer and nearer a parent’s side, became wonderfully vigorous as she approached her destination; and though there were three good hours of travel to Rouen as yet, the heavier part of the journey was past.  At her aunt’s would be a safe refuge, play what pranks she might, and there she would to-morrow meet those bravest of defenders Sol and Dan, to whom she had sent as much money as she could conveniently spare towards their expenses, with directions that they were to come by the most economical route, and meet her at the house of her aunt, Madame Moulin, previous to their educational trip to Paris, their own contribution being the value of the week’s work they would have to lose.  Thus backed up by Sol and Dan, her aunt, and Cornelia, Ethelberta felt quite the reverse of a lonely female persecuted by a wicked lord in a foreign country.  ‘He shall pay for his weaknesses, whatever they mean,’ she thought; ‘and what they mean I will find out at once.’

‘I am going to Paris,’ she said.

‘You cannot to-night, I think.’

‘To-morrow, I mean.’

‘I should like to go on to-morrow.  Perhaps I may.  So that there is a chance of our meeting again.’

‘Yes; but I do not leave Rouen till the afternoon.  I first shall go to the cathedral, and drive round the city.’

Lord Mountclere smiled pleasantly.  There seemed a sort of encouragement in her words.  Ethelberta’s thoughts, however, had flown at that moment to the approaching situation at her aunt’s hotel: it would be extremely embarrassing if he should go there.

‘Where do you stay, Lord Mountclere?’ she said.

Thus directly asked, he could not but commit himself to the name of the hotel he had been accustomed to patronize, which was one in the upper part of the city.

‘Mine is not that one,’ said Ethelberta frigidly.

No further remark was made under this head, and they conversed for the remainder of the daylight on scenery and other topics, Lord Mountclere’s air of festivity lending him all the qualities of an agreeable companion.  But notwithstanding her resolve, Ethelberta failed, for that day at least, to make her mind clear upon Lord Mountclere’s intentions.  To that end she would have liked first to know what were the exact limits set by society to conduct under present conditions, if society had ever set any at all, which was open to question: since experience had long ago taught her that much more freedom actually prevails in the communion of the sexes than is put on paper as etiquette, or admitted in so many words as correct behaviour.  In short, everything turned upon whether he had learnt of her position when off the platform at Mayfair Hall.

Wearied with these surmises, and the day’s travel, she closed her eyes.  And then her enamoured companion more widely opened his, and traced the beautiful features opposite him.  The arch of the brows—like a slur in music—the droop of the lashes, the meeting of the lips, and the sweet rotundity of the chin—one by one, and all together, they were adored, till his heart was like a retort full of spirits of wine.

It was a warm evening, and when they arrived at their journey’s end distant thunder rolled behind heavy and opaque clouds.  Ethelberta bade adieu to her attentive satellite, called to Cornelia, and entered a cab; but before they reached the inn the thunder had increased.  Then a cloud cracked into flame behind the iron spire of the cathedral, showing in relief its black ribs and stanchions, as if they were the bars of a blazing cresset held on high.

‘Ah, we will clamber up there to-morrow,’ said Ethelberta.

A wondrous stillness pervaded the streets of the city after this, though it was not late; and their arrival at M. Moulin’s door was quite an event for the quay.  No rain came, as they had expected, and by the time they halted the western sky had cleared, so that the newly-lit lamps on the quay, and the evening glow shining over the river, inwove their harmonious rays as the warp and woof of one lustrous tissue.  Before they had alighted there appeared from the archway Madame Moulin in person, followed by the servants of the hotel in a manner signifying that they did not receive a visitor once a fortnight, though at that moment the clatter of sixty knives, forks, and tongues was audible through an open window from the adjoining dining-room, to the great interest of a group of idlers outside.  Ethelberta had not seen her aunt since she last passed through the town with Lady Petherwin, who then told her that this landlady was the only respectable relative she seemed to have in the world.

Aunt Charlotte’s face was an English outline filled in with French shades under the eyes, on the brows, and round the mouth, by the natural effect of years; she resembled the British hostess as little as well could be, no point in her causing the slightest suggestion of drops taken for the stomach’s sake.  Telling the two young women she would gladly have met them at the station had she known the hour of their arrival, she kissed them both without much apparent notice of a difference in their conditions; indeed, seeming rather to incline to Cornelia, whose country face and homely style of clothing may have been more to her mind than Ethelberta’s finished travelling-dress, a class of article to which she appeared to be well accustomed.  Her husband was at this time at the head of the table-d’hote, and mentioning the fact as an excuse for his non-appearance, she accompanied them upstairs.

After the strain of keeping up smiles with Lord Mountclere, the rattle and shaking, and the general excitements of the chase across the water and along the rail, a face in which she saw a dim reflex of her mother’s was soothing in the extreme, and Ethelberta went up to the staircase with a feeling of expansive thankfulness.  Cornelia paused to admire the clean court and the small caged birds sleeping on their perches, the boxes of veronica in bloom, of oleander, and of tamarisk, which freshened the air of the court and lent a romance to the lamplight, the cooks in their paper caps and white blouses appearing at odd moments from an Avernus behind; while the prompt ‘v’la!’ of teetotums in mob caps, spinning down the staircase in answer to the periodic clang of bells, filled her with wonder, and pricked her conscience with thoughts of how seldom such transcendent nimbleness was attempted by herself in a part so nearly similar.

34. THE HÔTEL BEAU SÉJOUR AND SPOTS NEAR IT

The next day, much to Ethelberta’s surprise, there was a letter for her in her mother’s up-hill hand.  She neglected all the rest of its contents for the following engrossing sentences:—

‘Menlove has wormed everything out of poor Joey, we find, and your father is much upset about it.  She had another quarrel with him, and then declared she would expose you and us to Mrs. Doncastle and all your friends.  I think that Menlove is the kind of woman who will stick to her word, and the question for you to consider is, how can you best face out any report of the truth which she will spread, and contradict the lies that she will add to it?  It appears to me to be a dreadful thing, and so it will probably appear to you.  The worst part will be that your sisters and brothers are your servants, and that your father is actually engaged in the house where you dine.  I am dreadful afraid that this will be considered a fine joke for gossips, and will cause no end of laughs in society at your expense.  At any rate, should Menlove spread the report, it would absolutely prevent people from attending your lectures next season, for they would feel like dupes, and be angry with theirselves, and you, and all of us.

‘The only way out of the muddle that I can see for you is to put some scheme of marrying into effect as soon as possible, and before these things are known.  Surely by this time, with all your opportunities, you have been able to strike up an acquaintance with some gentleman or other, so as to make a suitable match.  You see, my dear Berta, marriage is a thing which, once carried out, fixes you more firm in a position than any personal brains can do; for as you stand at present, every loose tooth, and every combed-out hair, and every new wrinkle, and every sleepless night, is so much took away from your chance for the future, depending as it do upon your skill in charming.  I know that you have had some good offers, so do listen to me, and warm up the best man of them again a bit, and get him to repeat his words before your roundness shrinks away, and ’tis too late.

‘Mr. Ladywell has called here to see you; it was just after I had heard that this Menlove might do harm, so I thought I could do no better than send down word to him that you would much like to see him, and were wondering sadly why he had not called lately.  I gave him your address at Rouen, that he might find you, if he chose, at once, and be got to propose, since he is better than nobody.  I believe he said, directly Joey gave him the address, that he was going abroad, and my opinion is that he will come to you, because of the encouragement I gave him.  If so, you must thank me for my foresight and care for you.

‘I heave a sigh of relief sometimes at the thought that I, at any rate, found a husband before the present man-famine began.  Don’t refuse him this time, there’s a dear, or, mark my words, you’ll have cause to rue it—unless you have beforehand got engaged to somebody better than he.  You will not if you have not already, for the exposure is sure to come soon.’

‘O, this false position!—it is ruining your nature, my too thoughtful mother!  But I will not accept any of them—I’ll brazen it out!’ said Ethelberta, throwing the letter wherever it chose to fly, and picking it up to read again.  She stood and thought it all over.  ‘I must decide to do something!’ was her sigh again; and, feeling an irresistible need of motion, she put on her things and went out to see what resolve the morning would bring.

No rain had fallen during the night, and the air was now quiet in a warm heavy fog, through which old cider-smells, reminding her of Wessex, occasionally came from narrow streets in the background.  Ethelberta passed up the Rue Grand-Pont into the little dusky Rue Saint-Romain, behind the cathedral, being driven mechanically along by the fever and fret of her thoughts.  She was about to enter the building by the transept door, when she saw Lord Mountclere coming towards her.

Ethelberta felt equal to him, or a dozen such, this morning.  The looming spectres raised by her mother’s information, the wearing sense of being over-weighted in the race, were driving her to a Hamlet-like fantasticism and defiance of augury; moreover, she was abroad.

‘I am about to ascend to the parapets of the cathedral,’ said she, in answer to a half inquiry.

‘I should be delighted to accompany you,’ he rejoined, in a manner as capable of explanation by his knowledge of her secret as was Ethelberta’s manner by her sense of nearing the end of her maying.  But whether this frequent glide into her company was meant as ephemeral flirtation, to fill the half-hours of his journey, or whether it meant a serious love-suit—which were the only alternatives that had occurred to her on the subject—did not trouble her now.  ‘I am bound to be civil to so great a lord,’ she lightly thought, and expressing no objection to his presence, she passed with him through the outbuildings, containing Gothic lumber from the shadowy pile above, and ascended the stone staircase.  Emerging from its windings, they duly came to the long wooden ladder suspended in mid-air that led to the parapet of the tower.  This being wide enough for two abreast, she could hardly do otherwise than wait a moment for the viscount, who up to this point had never faltered, and who amused her as they went by scraps of his experience in various countries, which, to do him justice, he told with vivacity and humour.  Thus they reached the end of the flight, and entered behind a balustrade.

‘The prospect will be very lovely from this point when the fog has blown off,’ said Lord Mountclere faintly, for climbing and chattering at the same time had fairly taken away his breath.  He leant against the masonry to rest himself.  ‘The air is clearing already; I fancy I saw a sunbeam or two.’

‘It will be lovelier above,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘Let us go to the platform at the base of the flèche, and wait for a view there.’

‘With all my heart,’ said her attentive companion.

They passed in at a door and up some more stone steps, which landed them finally in the upper chamber of the tower.  Lord Mountclere sank on a beam, and asked smilingly if her ambition was not satisfied with this goal.  ‘I recollect going to the top some years ago,’ he added, ‘and it did not occur to me as being a thing worth doing a second time.  And there was no fog then, either.’

‘O,’ said Ethelberta, ‘it is one of the most splendid things a person can do!  The fog is going fast, and everybody with the least artistic feeling in the direction of bird’s-eye views makes the ascent every time of coming here.’

‘Of course, of course,’ said Lord Mountclere.  ‘And I am only too happy to go to any height with you.’

‘Since you so kindly offer, we will go to the very top of the spire—up through the fog and into the sunshine,’ said Ethelberta.

Lord Mountclere covered a grim misgiving by a gay smile, and away they went up a ladder admitting to the base of the huge iron framework above; then they entered upon the regular ascent of the cage, towards the hoped-for celestial blue, and among breezes which never descended so low as the town.  The journey was enlivened with more breathless witticisms from Lord Mountclere, till she stepped ahead of him again; when he asked how many more steps there were.

She inquired of the man in the blue blouse who accompanied them.  ‘Fifty-five,’ she returned to Lord Mountclere a moment later.

They went round, and round, and yet around.

‘How many are there now?’ Lord Mountclere demanded this time of the man.

‘A hundred and ninety, Monsieur,’ he said.

‘But there were only fifty-five ever so long ago!’

‘Two hundred and five, then,’ said the man.  ‘Perhaps the mist prevented Mademoiselle hearing me distinctly?’

‘Never mind: I would follow were there five thousand more, did Mademoiselle bid me!’ said the exhausted nobleman gallantly, in English.

‘Hush!’ said Ethelberta, with displeasure.

‘He doesn’t understand a word,’ said Lord Mountclere.

They paced the remainder of their spiral pathway in silence, and having at last reached the summit, Lord Mountclere sank down on one of the steps, panting out, ‘Dear me, dear me!’

Ethelberta leaned and looked around, and said, ‘How extraordinary this is.  It is sky above, below, everywhere.’

He dragged himself together and stepped to her side.  They formed as it were a little world to themselves, being completely ensphered by the fog, which here was dense as a sea of milk.  Below was neither town, country, nor cathedral—simply whiteness, into which the iron legs of their gigantic perch faded to nothing.

‘We have lost our labour; there is no prospect for you, after all, Lord Mountclere,’ said Ethelberta, turning her eyes upon him.  He looked at her face as if there were, and she continued, ‘Listen; I hear sounds from the town: people’s voices, and carts, and dogs, and the noise of a railway-train.  Shall we now descend, and own ourselves disappointed?’

‘Whenever you choose.’

Before they had put their intention in practice there appeared to be reasons for waiting awhile.  Out of the plain of fog beneath, a stone tooth seemed to be upheaving itself: then another showed forth.  These were the summits of the St. Romain and the Butter Towers—at the western end of the building.  As the fog stratum collapsed other summits manifested their presence further off—among them the two spires and lantern of St. Ouen’s; when to the left the dome of St. Madeline’s caught a first ray from the peering sun, under which its scaly surface glittered like a fish.  Then the mist rolled off in earnest, and revealed far beneath them a whole city, its red, blue, and grey roofs forming a variegated pattern, small and subdued as that of a pavement in mosaic.  Eastward in the spacious outlook lay the hill of St. Catherine, breaking intrusively into the large level valley of the Seine; south was the river which had been the parent of the mist, and the Ile Lacroix, gorgeous in scarlet, purple, and green.  On the western horizon could be dimly discerned melancholy forests, and further to the right stood the hill and rich groves of Boisguillaume.

Ethelberta having now done looking around, the descent was begun and continued without intermission till they came to the passage behind the parapet.

Ethelberta was about to step airily forward, when there reached her ear the voices of persons below.  She recognized as one of them the slow unaccented tones of Neigh.

‘Please wait a minute!’ she said in a peremptory manner of confusion sufficient to attract Lord Mountclere’s attention.

A recollection had sprung to her mind in a moment.  She had half made an appointment with Neigh at her aunt’s hotel for this very week, and here was he in Rouen to keep it.  To meet him while indulging in this vagary with Lord Mountclere—which, now that the mood it had been engendered by was passing off, she somewhat regretted—would be the height of imprudence.

‘I should like to go round to the other side of the parapet for a few moments,’ she said, with decisive quickness.  ‘Come with me, Lord Mountclere.’

They went round to the other side.  Here she kept the viscount and their suisse until she deemed it probable that Neigh had passed by, when she returned with her companions and descended to the bottom.  They emerged into the Rue Saint-Romain, whereupon a woman called from the opposite side of the way to their guide, stating that she had told the other English gentleman that the English lady had gone into the flèche.

Ethelberta turned and looked up.  She could just discern Neigh’s form upon the steps of the flèche above, ascending toilsomely in search of her.

‘What English gentleman could that have been?’ said Lord Mountclere, after paying the man.  He spoke in a way which showed he had not overlooked her confusion.  ‘It seems that he must have been searching for us, or rather for you?’

‘Only Mr. Neigh,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘He told me he was coming here.  I believe he is waiting for an interview with me.’

‘H’m,’ said Lord Mountclere.

‘Business—only business,’ said she.

‘Shall I leave you?  Perhaps the business is important—most important.’

‘Unfortunately it is.’

‘You must forgive me this once: I cannot help—will you give me permission to make a difficult remark?’ said Lord Mountclere, in an impatient voice.

‘With pleasure.’

‘Well, then, the business I meant was—an engagement to be married.’

Had it been possible for a woman to be perpetually on the alert she might now have supposed that Lord Mountclere knew all about her; a mechanical deference must have restrained such an illusion had he seen her in any other light than that of a distracting slave.  But she answered quietly, ‘So did I.’

‘But how does he know—dear me, dear me!  I beg pardon,’ said the viscount.

She looked at him curiously, as if to imply that he was seriously out of his reckoning in respect of her if he supposed that he would be allowed to continue this little play at love-making as long as he chose, when she was offered the position of wife by a man so good as Neigh.

They stood in silence side by side till, much to her ease, Cornelia appeared at the corner waiting.  At the last moment he said, in somewhat agitated tones, and with what appeared to be a renewal of the respect which had been imperceptibly dropped since they crossed the Channel, ‘I was not aware of your engagement to Mr. Neigh.  I fear I have been acting mistakenly on that account.’

‘There is no engagement as yet,’ said she.

Lord Mountclere brightened like a child.  ‘Then may I have a few words in private—’

‘Not now—not to-day,’ said Ethelberta, with a certain irritation at she knew not what.  ‘Believe me, Lord Mountclere, you are mistaken in many things.  I mean, you think more of me than you ought.  A time will come when you will despise me for this day’s work, and it is madness in you to go further.’

Lord Mountclere, knowing what he did know, may have imagined what she referred to; but Ethelberta was without the least proof that he had the key to her humour.  ‘Well, well, I’ll be responsible for the madness,’ he said.  ‘I know you to be—a famous woman, at all events; and that’s enough.  I would say more, but I cannot here.  May I call upon you?’

‘Not now.’

‘When shall I?’

‘If you must, let it be a month hence at my house in town,’ she said indifferently, the Hamlet mood being still upon her.  ‘Yes, call upon us then, and I will tell you everything that may remain to be told, if you should be inclined to listen.  A rumour is afloat which will undeceive you in much, and depress me to death.  And now I will walk back: pray excuse me.’  She entered the street, and joined Cornelia.

Lord Mountclere paced irregularly along, turned the corner, and went towards his inn, nearing which his tread grew lighter, till he scarcely seemed to touch the ground.  He became gleeful, and said to himself, nervously palming his hip with his left hand, as if previous to plunging it into hot water for some prize: ‘Upon my life I’ve a good mind!  Upon my life I have!. . . .  I must make a straightforward thing of it, and at once; or he will have her.  But he shall not, and I will—hee-hee!’

The fascinated man, screaming inwardly with the excitement, glee, and agony of his position, entered the hotel, wrote a hasty note to Ethelberta and despatched it by hand, looked to his dress and appearance, ordered a carriage, and in a quarter of an hour was being driven towards the Hôtel Beau Séjour, whither his note had preceded him.

35. THE HOTEL (continued), AND THE QUAY IN FRONT

Ethelberta, having arrived there some time earlier, had gone straight to her aunt, whom she found sitting behind a large ledger in the office, making up the accounts with her husband, a well-framed reflective man with a grey beard.  M. Moulin bustled, waited for her remarks and replies, and made much of her in a general way, when Ethelberta said, what she had wanted to say instantly, ‘Has a gentleman called Mr. Neigh been here?’

‘O yes—I think it is Neigh—there’s a card upstairs,’ replied her aunt.  ‘I told him you were alone at the cathedral, and I believe he walked that way.  Besides that one, another has come for you—a Mr. Ladywell, and he is waiting.’

‘Not for me?’

‘Yes, indeed.  I thought he seemed so anxious, under a sort of assumed calmness, that I recommended him to remain till you came in.’

‘Goodness, aunt; why did you?’ Ethelberta said, and thought how much her mother’s sister resembled her mother in doings of that sort.

‘I thought he had some good reason for seeing you.  Are these men intruders, then?’

‘O no—a woman who attempts a public career must expect to be treated as public property: what would be an intrusion on a domiciled gentlewoman is a tribute to me.  You cannot have celebrity and sex-privilege both.’  Thus Ethelberta laughed off the awkward conjuncture, inwardly deploring the unconscionable maternal meddling which had led to this, though not resentfully, for she had too much staunchness of heart to decry a parent’s misdirected zeal.  Had the clanship feeling been universally as strong as in the Chickerel family, the fable of the well-bonded fagot might have remained unwritten.

Ladywell had sent her a letter about getting his picture of herself engraved for an illustrated paper, and she had not replied, considering that she had nothing to do with the matter, her form and feature having been given in the painting as no portrait at all, but as those of an ideal.  To see him now would be vexatious; and yet it was chilly and formal to an ungenerous degree to keep aloof from him, sitting lonely in the same house.  ‘A few weeks hence,’ she thought, ‘when Menlove’s disclosures make me ridiculous, he may slight me as a lackey’s girl, an upstart, an adventuress, and hardly return my bow in the street.  Then I may wish I had given him no personal cause for additional bitterness.’  So, putting off the fine lady, Ethelberta thought she would see Ladywell at once.

Ladywell was unaffectedly glad to meet her; so glad, that Ethelberta wished heartily, for his sake, there could be warm friendship between herself and him, as well as all her lovers, without that insistent courtship-and-marriage question, which sent them all scattering like leaves in a pestilent blast, at enmity with one another.  She was less pleased when she found that Ladywell, after saying all there was to say about his painting, gently signified that he had been misinformed, as he believed, concerning her future intentions, which had led to his absenting himself entirely from her; the remark being of course, a natural product of her mother’s injudicious message to him.

She cut him short with terse candour.  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘a false report is in circulation.  I am not yet engaged to be married to any one, if that is your meaning.’

Ladywell looked cheerful at this frank answer, and said tentatively, ‘Am I forgotten?’

‘No; you are exactly as you always were in my mind.’

‘Then I have been cruelly deceived.  I was guided too much by appearances, and they were very delusive.  I am beyond measure glad I came here to-day.  I called at your house and learnt that you were here; and as I was going out of town, in any indefinite direction, I settled then to come this way.  What a happy idea it was!  To think of you now—and I may be permitted to—’

‘Assuredly you may not.  How many times I have told you that!’

‘But I do not wish for any formal engagement,’ said Ladywell quickly, fearing she might commit herself to some expression of positive denial, which he could never surmount.  ‘I’ll wait—I’ll wait any length of time.  Remember, you have never absolutely forbidden my—friendship.  Will you delay your answer till some time hence, when you have thoroughly considered; since I fear it may be a hasty one now?’

‘Yes, indeed; it may be hasty.’

‘You will delay it?’

‘Yes.’

‘When shall it be?’

‘Say a month hence.  I suggest that, because by that time you will have found an answer in your own mind: strange things may happen before then.  “She shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them; then shall she say, I will go and return to my first”—however, that’s no matter.’

‘What—did you—?’ Ladywell began, altogether bewildered by this.

‘It is a passage in Hosea which came to my mind, as possibly applicable to myself some day,’ she answered.  ‘It was mere impulse.’

‘Ha-ha!—a jest—one of your romances broken loose.  There is no law for impulse: that is why I am here.’

Thus fancifully they conversed till the interview concluded.  Getting her to promise that she would see him again, Ladywell retired to a sitting-room on the same landing, in which he had been writing letters before she came up.  Immediately upon this her aunt, who began to suspect that something peculiar was in the wind, came to tell her that Mr. Neigh had been inquiring for her again.

‘Send him in,’ said Ethelberta.

Neigh’s footsteps approached, and the well-known figure entered.  Ethelberta received him smilingly, for she was getting so used to awkward juxtapositions that she treated them quite as a natural situation.  She merely hoped that Ladywell would not hear them talking through the partition.

Neigh scarcely said anything as a beginning: she knew his errand perfectly; and unaccountable as it was to her, the strange and unceremonious relationship between them, that had originated in the peculiar conditions of their first close meeting, was continued now as usual.

‘Have you been able to bestow a thought on the question between us?  I hope so,’ said Neigh.

‘It is no use,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘Wait a month, and you will not require an answer.  You will not mind speaking low, because of a person in the next room?’

‘Not at all.—Why will that be?’

‘I might say; but let us speak of something else.’

‘I don’t see how we can,’ said Neigh brusquely.  ‘I had no other reason on earth for calling here.  I wished to get the matter settled, and I could not be satisfied without seeing you.  I hate writing on matters of this sort.  In fact I can’t do it, and that’s why I am here.’

He was still speaking when an attendant entered with a note.

‘Will you excuse me one moment?’ said Ethelberta, stepping to the window and opening the missive.  It contained these words only, in a scrawl so full of deformities that she could hardly piece its meaning together:—

‘I must see you again to-day unless you absolutely deny yourself to me, which I shall take as a refusal to meet me any more.  I will arrive, punctually, five minutes after you receive this note.  Do pray be alone if you can, and eternally gratify,—Yours,

‘MOUNTCLERE.’

‘If anything has happened I shall be pleased to wait,’ said Neigh, seeing her concern when she had closed the note.

‘O no, it is nothing,’ said Ethelberta precipitately.  ‘Yet I think I will ask you to wait,’ she added, not liking to dismiss Neigh in a hurry; for she was not insensible to his perseverance in seeking her over all these miles of sea and land; and secondly, she feared that if he were to leave on the instant he might run into the arms of Lord Mountclere and Ladywell.

‘I shall be only too happy to stay till you are at leisure,’ said Neigh, in the unimpassioned delivery he used whether his meaning were a trite compliment or the expression of his most earnest feeling.

‘I may be rather a long time,’ said Ethelberta dubiously.

‘My time is yours.’

Ethelberta left the room and hurried to her aunt, exclaiming, ‘O, Aunt Charlotte, I hope you have rooms enough to spare for my visitors, for they are like the fox, the goose, and the corn, in the riddle; I cannot leave them together, and I can only be with one at a time.  I want the nicest drawing-room you have for an interview of a bare two minutes with an old gentleman.  I am so sorry this has happened, but it is not altogether my fault!  I only arranged to see one of them; but the other was sent to me by mother, in a mistake, and the third met with me on my journey: that’s the explanation.  There’s the oldest of them just come.’

She looked through the glass partition, and under the arch of the court-gate, as the wheels of the viscount’s carriage were heard outside.  Ethelberta ascended to a room on the first floor, Lord Mountclere was shown up, and the door closed upon them.

At this time Neigh was very comfortably lounging in an arm-chair in Ethelberta’s room on the second floor.  This was a pleasant enough way of passing the minutes with such a tender interview in prospect; and as he leant he looked with languid and luxurious interest through the open casement at the spars and rigging of some luggers on the Seine, the pillars of the suspension bridge, and the scenery of the Faubourg St. Sever on the other side of the river.  How languid his interest might ultimately have become there is no knowing; but there soon arose upon his ear the accents of Ethelberta in low distinctness from somewhere outside the room.

‘Yes; the scene is pleasant to-day,’ she said.  ‘I like a view over a river.’

‘I should think the steamboats are objectionable when they stop here,’ said another person.

Neigh’s face closed in to an aspect of perplexity.  ‘Surely that cannot be Lord Mountclere?’ he muttered.

Had he been certain that Ethelberta was only talking to a stranger, Neigh would probably have felt their conversation to be no business of his, much as he might have been surprised to find her giving audience to another man at such a place.  But his impression that the voice was that of his acquaintance, Lord Mountclere, coupled with doubts as to its possibility, was enough to lead him to rise from the chair and put his head out of the window.

Upon a balcony beneath him were the speakers, as he had suspected—Ethelberta and the viscount.

Looking right and left, he saw projecting from the next window the head of his friend Ladywell, gazing right and left likewise, apparently just drawn out by the same voice which had attracted himself.

‘What—you, Neigh!—how strange,’ came from Ladywell’s lips before he had time to recollect that great coolness existed between himself and Neigh on Ethelberta’s account, which had led to the reduction of their intimacy to the most attenuated of nods and good-mornings ever since the Harlequin-rose incident at Cripplegate.

‘Yes; it is rather strange,’ said Neigh, with saturnine evenness.  ‘Still a fellow must be somewhere.’

Each then looked over his window-sill downwards, upon the speakers who had attracted them thither.

Lord Mountclere uttered something in a low tone which did not reach the young men; to which Ethelberta replied, ‘As I have said, Lord Mountclere, I cannot give you an answer now.  I must consider what to do with Mr. Neigh and Mr. Ladywell.  It is too sudden for me to decide at once.  I could not do so until I have got home to England, when I will write you a letter, stating frankly my affairs and those of my relatives.  I shall not consider that you have addressed me on the subject of marriage until, having received my letter, you—’

‘Repeat my proposal,’ said Lord Mountclere.

‘Yes.’

‘My dear Mrs. Petherwin, it is as good as repeated!  But I have no right to assume anything you don’t wish me to assume, and I will wait.  How long is it that I am to suffer in this uncertainty?’

‘A month.  By that time I shall have grown weary of my other two suitors.’

‘A month!  Really inflexible?’

Ethelberta had returned inside the window, and her answer was inaudible.  Ladywell and Neigh looked up, and their eyes met.  Both had been reluctant to remain where they stood, but they were too fascinated to instantly retire.  Neigh moved now, and Ladywell did the same.  Each saw that the face of his companion was flushed.

‘Come in and see me,’ said Ladywell quickly, before quite withdrawing his head.  ‘I am staying in this room.’

‘I will,’ said Neigh; and taking his hat he left Ethelberta’s apartment forthwith.

On entering the quarters of his friend he found him seated at a table whereon writing materials were strewn.  They shook hands in silence, but the meaning in their looks was enough.

‘Just let me write a note, Ladywell, and I’m your man,’ said Neigh then, with the freedom of an old acquaintance.

‘I was going to do the same thing,’ said Ladywell.

Neigh then sat down, and for a minute or two nothing was to be heard but the scratching of a pair of pens, ending on the one side with a more boisterous scratch, as the writer shaped ‘Eustace Ladywell,’ and on the other with slow firmness in the characters ‘Alfred Neigh.’

‘There’s for you, my fair one,’ said Neigh, closing and directing his letter.

‘Yours is for Mrs. Petherwin?  So is mine,’ said Ladywell, grasping the bell-pull.  ‘Shall I direct it to be put on her table with this one?’

‘Thanks.’  And the two letters went off to Ethelberta’s sitting-room, which she had vacated to receive Lord Mountclere in an empty one beneath.  Neigh’s letter was simply a pleading of a sudden call away which prevented his waiting till she should return; Ladywell’s, though stating the same reason for leaving, was more of an upbraiding nature, and might almost have told its reader, were she to take the trouble to guess, that he knew of the business of Lord Mountclere with her to-day.

‘Now, let us get out of this place,’ said Neigh.  He proceeded at once down the stairs, followed by Ladywell, who—settling his account at the bureau without calling for a bill, and directing his portmanteau to be sent to the Right-bank railway station—went with Neigh into the street.

They had not walked fifty yards up the quay when two British workmen, in holiday costume, who had just turned the corner of the Rue Jeanne d’Arc, approached them.  Seeing him to be an Englishman, one of the two addressed Neigh, saying, ‘Can you tell us the way, sir, to the Hotel Bold Soldier?’

Neigh pointed out the place he had just come from to the tall young men, and continued his walk with Ladywell.

Ladywell was the first to break silence.  ‘I have been considerably misled, Neigh,’ he said; ‘and I imagine from what has just happened that you have been misled too.’

‘Just a little,’ said Neigh, bringing abstracted lines of meditation into his face.  ‘But it was my own fault: for I ought to have known that these stage and platform women have what they are pleased to call Bohemianism so thoroughly engrained with their natures that they are no more constant to usage in their sentiments than they are in their way of living.  Good Lord, to think she has caught old Mountclere!  She is sure to have him if she does not dally with him so long that he gets cool again.’

‘A beautiful creature like her to think of marrying such an infatuated idiot as he!’

‘He can give her a title as well as younger men.  It will not be the first time that such matches have been made.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Ladywell vehemently.  ‘She has too much poetry in her—too much good sense; her nature is the essence of all that’s romantic.  I can’t help saying it, though she has treated me cruelly.’

‘She has good looks, certainly.  I’ll own to that.  As for her romance and good-feeling, that I leave to you.  I think she has treated you no more cruelly, as you call it, than she has me, come to that.’

‘She told me she would give me an answer in a month,’ said Ladywell emotionally.

‘So she told me,’ said Neigh.

‘And so she told him,’ said Ladywell.

‘And I have no doubt she will keep her word to him in her usual precise manner.’

‘But see what she implied to me!  I distinctly understood from her that the answer would be favourable.’

‘So did I.’

‘So does he.’

‘And he is sure to be the one who gets it, since only one of us can.  Well, I wouldn’t marry her for love, money, nor—’

‘Offspring.’

‘Exactly: I would not.  “I’ll give you an answer in a month”—to all three of us!  For God’s sake let’s sit down here and have something to drink.’

They drew up a couple of chairs to one of the tables of a wine-shop close by, and shouted to the waiter with the vigour of persons going to the dogs.  Here, behind the horizontal-headed trees that dotted this part of the quay, they sat over their bottles denouncing womankind till the sun got low down upon the river, and the houses on the further side began to be toned by a blue mist.  At last they rose from their seats and departed, Neigh to dine and consider his route, and Ladywell to take the train for Dieppe.

While these incidents had been in progress the two workmen had found their way into the hotel where Ethelberta was staying.  Passing through the entrance, they stood at gaze in the court, much perplexed as to the door to be made for; the difficulty was solved by the appearance of Cornelia, who in expectation of them had been for the last half-hour leaning over the sill of her bed-room window, which looked into the interior, amusing herself by watching the movements to and fro in the court beneath.

After conversing awhile in undertones as if they had no real right there at all, Cornelia told them she would call their sister, if an old gentleman who had been to see her were gone again.  Cornelia then ran away, and Sol and Dan stood aloof, till they had seen the old gentleman alluded to go to the door and drive off, shortly after which Ethelberta ran down to meet them.

‘Whatever have you got as your luggage?’ she said, after hearing a few words about their journey, and looking at a curious object like a huge extended accordion with bellows of gorgeous-patterned carpeting.

‘Well, I thought to myself,’ said Sol, ‘’tis a terrible bother about carrying our things.  So what did I do but turn to and make a carpet-bag that would hold all mine and Dan’s too.  This, you see, Berta, is a deal top and bottom out of three-quarter stuff, stained and varnished.  Well, then you see I’ve got carpet sides tacked on with these brass nails, which make it look very handsome; and so when my bag is empty ’twill shut up and be only a couple of boards under yer arm, and when ’tis open it will hold a’most anything you like to put in it.  That portmantle didn’t cost more than three half-crowns altogether, and ten pound wouldn’t ha’ got anything so strong from a portmantle maker, would it, Dan?’

‘Well, no.’

‘And then you see, Berta,’ Sol continued in the same earnest tone, and further exhibiting the article, ‘I’ve made this trap-door in the top with hinges and padlock complete, so that—’

‘I am afraid it is tiring you after your journey to explain all this to me,’ said Ethelberta gently, noticing that a few Gallic smilers were gathering round.  ‘Aunt has found a nice room for you at the top of the staircase in that corner—“Escalier D” you’ll see painted at the bottom—and when you have been up come across to me at number thirty-four on this side, and we’ll talk about everything.’

‘Look here, Sol,’ said Dan, who had left his brother and gone on to the stairs.  ‘What a rum staircase—the treads all in little blocks, and painted chocolate, as I am alive!’

‘I am afraid I shall not be able to go on to Paris with you, after all,’ Ethelberta continued to Sol.  ‘Something has just happened which makes it desirable for me to return at once to England.  But I will write a list of all you are to see, and where you are to go, so that it will make little difference, I hope.’

Ten minutes before this time Ethelberta had been frankly and earnestly asked by Lord Mountclere to become his bride; not only so, but he pressed her to consent to have the ceremony performed before they returned to England.  Ethelberta had unquestionably been much surprised; and, barring the fact that the viscount was somewhat ancient in comparison with herself, the temptation to close with his offer was strong, and would have been felt as such by any woman in the position of Ethelberta, now a little reckless by stress of circumstances, and tinged with a bitterness of spirit against herself and the world generally.  But she was experienced enough to know what heaviness might result from a hasty marriage, entered into with a mind full of concealments and suppressions which, if told, were likely to stop the marriage altogether; and after trying to bring herself to speak of her family and situation to Lord Mountclere as he stood, a certain caution triumphed, and she concluded that it would be better to postpone her reply till she could consider which of two courses it would be advisable to adopt; to write and explain to him, or to explain nothing and refuse him.  The third course, to explain nothing and hasten the wedding, she rejected without hesitation.  With a pervading sense of her own obligations in forming this compact it did not occur to her to ask if Lord Mountclere might not have duties of explanation equally with herself, though bearing rather on the moral than the social aspects of the case.

Her resolution not to go on to Paris was formed simply because Lord Mountclere himself was proceeding in that direction, which might lead to other unseemly rencounters with him had she, too, persevered in her journey.  She accordingly gave Sol and Dan directions for their guidance to Paris and back, starting herself with Cornelia the next day to return again to Knollsea, and to decide finally and for ever what to do in the vexed question at present agitating her.

Never before in her life had she treated marriage in such a terribly cool and cynical spirit as she had done that day; she was almost frightened at herself in thinking of it.  How far any known system of ethics might excuse her on the score of those curious pressures which had been brought to bear upon her life, or whether it could excuse her at all, she had no spirit to inquire.  English society appeared a gloomy concretion enough to abide in as she contemplated it on this journey home; yet, since its gloominess was less an essential quality than an accident of her point of view, that point of view she had determined to change.

There lay open to her two directions in which to move.  She might annex herself to the easy-going high by wedding an old nobleman, or she might join for good and all the easy-going low, by plunging back to the level of her family, giving up all her ambitions for them, settling as the wife of a provincial music-master named Julian, with a little shop of fiddles and flutes, a couple of old pianos, a few sheets of stale music pinned to a string, and a narrow back parlour, wherein she would wait for the phenomenon of a customer.  And each of these divergent grooves had its fascinations, till she reflected with regard to the first that, even though she were a legal and indisputable Lady Mountclere, she might be despised by my lord’s circle, and left lone and lorn.  The intermediate path of accepting Neigh or Ladywell had no more attractions for her taste than the fact of disappointing them had qualms for her conscience; and how few these were may be inferred from her opinion, true or false, that two words about the spigot on her escutcheon would sweep her lovers’ affections to the antipodes.  She had now and then imagined that her previous intermarriage with the Petherwin family might efface much besides her surname, but experience proved that the having been wife for a few weeks to a minor who died in his father’s lifetime, did not weave such a tissue of glory about her course as would resist a speedy undoing by startling confessions on her station before her marriage, and her environments now.