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?'

'Hotel Beau Sejour.'

'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 HOTEL BEAU SEJOUR 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 fleche, and wait for a view there.'

'With all my heart,' said her attentive companion.