The Hand of Ethelberta Read Online

Ladywell.  It is too sudden for me to decide at once.  I could not do so until I have got home to England, when I will write you a letter, stating frankly my affairs and those of my relatives.  I shall not consider that you have addressed me on the subject of marriage until, having received my letter, you—’

‘Repeat my proposal,’ said Lord Mountclere.

‘Yes.’

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

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

‘A month!  Really inflexible?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘So she told me,’ said Neigh.

‘And so she told him,’ said Ladywell.

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

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

‘So did I.’

‘So does he.’

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

‘Offspring.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Well, no.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

36. THE HOUSE IN TOWN

Returning by way of Knollsea, where she remained a week or two, Ethelberta appeared one evening at the end of September before her house in Exonbury Crescent, accompanied by a pair of cabs with the children and luggage; but Picotee was left at Knollsea, for reasons which Ethelberta explained when the family assembled in conclave.  Her father was there, and began telling her of a surprising change in Menlove—an unasked-for concession to their cause, and a vow of secrecy which he could not account for, unless any friend of Ethelberta’s had bribed her.

‘O no—that cannot be,’ said she.  Any influence of Lord Mountclere to that effect was the last thing that could enter her thoughts.  ‘However, what Menlove does makes little difference to me now.’  And she proceeded to state that she had almost come to a decision which would entirely alter their way of living.

‘I hope it will not be of the sort your last decision was,’ said her mother.

‘No; quite the reverse.  I shall not live here in state any longer.  We will let the house throughout as lodgings, while it is ours; and you and the girls must manage it.  I will retire from the scene altogether, and stay for the winter at Knollsea with Picotee.  I want to consider my plans for next year, and I would rather be away from town.  Picotee is left there, and I return in two days with the books and papers I require.’

‘What are your plans to be?’

‘I am going to be a schoolmistress—I think I am.’

‘A schoolmistress?’

‘Yes.  And Picotee returns to the same occupation, which she ought never to have forsaken.  We are going to study arithmetic and geography until Christmas; then I shall send her adrift to finish her term as pupil-teacher, while I go into a training-school.  By the time I have to give up this house I shall just have got a little country school.’

‘But,’ said her mother, aghast, ‘why not write more poems and sell ’em?’

‘Why not be a governess as you were?’ said her father.

‘Why not go on with your tales at Mayfair Hall?’ said Gwendoline.

‘I’ll answer as well as I can.  I have decided to give up romancing because I cannot think of any more that pleases me.  I have been trying at Knollsea for a fortnight, and it is no use.  I will never be a governess again: I would rather be a servant.  If I am a schoolmistress I shall be entirely free from all contact with the great, which is what I desire, for I hate them, and am getting almost as revolutionary as Sol.  Father, I cannot endure this kind of existence any longer; I sleep at night as if I had committed a murder: I start up and see processions of people, audiences, battalions of lovers obtained under false pretences—all denouncing me with the finger of ridicule.  Mother’s suggestion about my marrying I followed out as far as dogged resolution would carry me, but during my journey here I have broken down; for I don’t want to marry a second time among people who would regard me as an upstart or intruder.  I am sick of ambition.  My only longing now is to fly from society altogether, and go to any hovel on earth where I could be at peace.’

‘What—has anybody been insulting you?’ said Mrs. Chickerel.

‘Yes; or rather I sometimes think he may have: that is, if a proposal of marriage is only removed from being a proposal of a very different kind by an accident.’

‘A proposal of marriage can never be an insult,’ her mother returned.

‘I think otherwise,’ said Ethelberta.

‘So do I,’ said her father.

‘Unless the man was beneath you, and I don’t suppose he was that,’ added Mrs. Chickerel.

‘You are quite right; he was not that.  But we will not talk of this branch of the subject.  By far the most serious concern with me is that I ought to do some good by marriage, or by heroic performance of some kind; while going back to give the rudiments of education to remote hamleteers will do none of you any good whatever.’

‘Never you mind us,’ said her father; ‘mind yourself.’

‘I shall hardly be minding myself either, in your opinion, by doing that,’ said Ethelberta dryly.  ‘But it will be more tolerable than what I am doing now.  Georgina, and Myrtle, and Emmeline, and Joey will not get the education I intended for them; but that must go, I suppose.’

‘How full of vagaries you are,’ said her mother.  ‘Why won’t it do to continue as you are?  No sooner have I learnt up your schemes, and got enough used to ’em to see something in ’em, than you must needs bewilder me again by starting some fresh one, so that my mind gets no rest at all.’

Ethelberta too keenly felt the justice of this remark, querulous as it was, to care to defend herself.  It was hopeless to attempt to explain to her mother that the oscillations of her mind might arise as naturally from the perfection of its balance, like those of a logan-stone, as from inherent lightness; and such an explanation, however comforting to its subject, was little better than none to simple hearts who only could look to tangible outcrops.

‘Really, Ethelberta,’ remonstrated her mother, ‘this is very odd.  Making yourself miserable in trying to get a position on our account is one thing, and not necessary; but I think it ridiculous to rush into the other extreme, and go wilfully down in the scale.  You may just as well exercise your wits in trying to swim as in trying to sink.’

‘Yes; that’s what I think,’ said her father.  ‘But of course Berta knows best.’

‘I think so too,’ said Gwendoline.

‘And so do I,’ said Cornelia.  ‘If I had once moved about in large circles like Ethelberta, I wouldn’t go down and be a schoolmistress—not I.’

‘I own it is foolish—suppose it is,’ said Ethelberta wearily, and with a readiness of misgiving that showed how recent and hasty was the scheme.  ‘Perhaps you are right, mother; anything rather than retreat.  I wonder if you are right!  Well, I will think again of it to-night.  Do not let us speak more about it now.’

She did think of it that night, very long and painfully.  The arguments of her relatives seemed ponderous as opposed to her own inconsequent longing for escape from galling trammels.  If she had stood alone, the sentiment that she had begun to build but was not able to finish, by whomsoever it might have been entertained, would have had few terrors; but that the opinion should be held by her nearest of kin, to cause them pain for life, was a grievous thing.  The more she thought of it, the less easy seemed the justification of her desire for obscurity.  From regarding it as a high instinct she passed into a humour that gave that desire the appearance of a whim.  But could she really set in train events, which, if not abortive, would take her to the altar with Viscount Mountclere?

In one determination she never faltered; to commit her sin thoroughly if she committed it at all.  Her relatives believed her choice to lie between Neigh and Ladywell alone.  But once having decided to pass over Christopher, whom she had loved, there could be no pausing for Ladywell because she liked him, or for Neigh in that she was influenced by him.  They were both too near her level to be trusted to bear the shock of receiving her from her father’s hands.  But it was possible that though her genesis might tinge with vulgarity a commoner’s household, susceptible of such depreciation, it might show as a picturesque contrast in the family circle of a peer.  Hence it was just as well to go to the end of her logic, where reasons for tergiversation would be most pronounced.  This thought of the viscount, however, was a secret for her own breast alone.

Nearly the whole of that night she sat weighing—first, the question itself of marrying Lord Mountclere; and, at other times, whether, for safety, she might marry him without previously revealing family particulars hitherto held necessary to be revealed—a piece of conduct she had once felt to be indefensible.  The ingenious Ethelberta, much more prone than the majority of women to theorize on conduct, felt the need of some soothing defence of the actions involved in any ambiguous course before finally committing herself to it.

She took down a well-known treatise on Utilitarianism which she had perused once before, and to which she had given her adherence ere any instance had arisen wherein she might wish to take it as a guide.  Here she desultorily searched for argument, and found it; but the application of her author’s philosophy to the marriage question was an operation of her own, as unjustifiable as it was likely in the circumstances.

‘The ultimate end,’ she read, ‘with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people) is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality. . . .  This being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality.’

It was an open question, so far, whether her own happiness should or should not be preferred to that of others.  But that her personal interests were not to be considered as paramount appeared further on:—

‘The happiness which forms the standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent’s own happiness but that of all concerned.  As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.’

As to whose happiness was meant by that of ‘other people,’ ‘all concerned,’ and so on, her luminous moralist soon enlightened her:—

‘The occasions on which any person (except one in a thousand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale—in other words, to be a public benefactor—are but exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on to consider public utility; in every other case private utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to attend to.’

And that these few persons should be those endeared to her by every domestic tie no argument was needed to prove.  That their happiness would be in proportion to her own well-doing, and power to remove their risks of indigence, required no proving either to her now.

By a sorry but unconscious misapplication of sound and wide reasoning did the active mind of Ethelberta thus find itself a solace.  At about the midnight hour she felt more fortified on the expediency of marriage with Lord Mountclere than she had done at all since musing on it.  In respect of the second query, whether or not, in that event, to conceal from Lord Mountclere the circumstances of her position till it should be too late for him to object to them, she found her conscience inconveniently in the way of her theory, and the oracle before her afforded no hint.  ‘Ah—it is a point for a casuist!’ she said.

An old treatise on Casuistry lay on the top shelf.  She opened it—more from curiosity than from guidance this time, it must be observed—at a chapter bearing on her own problem, ‘The disciplina arcani, or, the doctrine of reserve.’

Here she read that there were plenty of apparent instances of this in Scripture, and that it was formed into a recognized system in the early Church.  With reference to direct acts of deception, it was argued that since there were confessedly cases where killing is no murder, might there not be cases where lying is no sin?  It could not be right—or, indeed, anything but most absurd—to say in effect that no doubt circumstances would occur where every sound man would tell a lie, and would be a brute or a fool if he did not, and to say at the same time that it is quite indefensible in principle.  Duty was the key to conduct then, and if in such cases duties appeared to clash they would be found not to do so on examination.  The lesser duty would yield to the greater, and therefore ceased to be a duty.

This author she found to be not so tolerable; he distracted her.  She put him aside and gave over reading, having decided on this second point, that she would, at any hazard, represent the truth to Lord Mountclere before listening to another word from him.  ‘Well, at last I have done,’ she said, ‘and am ready for my rôle.’

In looking back upon her past as she retired to rest, Ethelberta could almost doubt herself to be the identical woman with her who had entered on a romantic career a few short years ago.  For that doubt she had good reason.  She had begun as a poet of the Satanic school in a sweetened form; she was ending as a pseudo-utilitarian.  Was there ever such a transmutation effected before by the action of a hard environment?  It was not without a qualm of regret that she discerned how the last infirmity of a noble mind had at length nearly departed from her.  She wondered if her early notes had had the genuine ring in them, or whether a poet who could be thrust by realities to a distance beyond recognition as such was a true poet at all.  Yet Ethelberta’s gradient had been regular: emotional poetry, light verse, romance as an object, romance as a means, thoughts of marriage as an aid to her pursuits, a vow to marry for the good of her family; in other words, from soft and playful Romanticism to distorted Benthamism.  Was the moral incline upward or down?

37. KNOLLSEA—AN ORNAMENTAL VILLA

Her energies collected and fermented anew by the results of the vigil, Ethelberta left town for Knollsea, where she joined Picotee the same evening.  Picotee produced a letter, which had been addressed to her sister at their London residence, but was not received by her there, Mrs. Chickerel having forwarded it to Knollsea the day before Ethelberta arrived in town.

The crinkled writing, in character like the coast-line of Tierra del Fuego, was becoming familiar by this time.  While reading the note she informed Picotee, between a quick breath and a rustle of frills, that it was from Lord Mountclere, who wrote on the subject of calling to see her, suggesting a day in the following week.  ‘Now, Picotee,’ she continued, ‘we shall have to receive him, and make the most of him, for I have altered my plans since I was last in Knollsea.’

‘Altered them again?  What are you going to be now—not a poor person after all?’

‘Indeed not.  And so I turn and turn.  Can you imagine what Lord Mountclere is coming for?  But don’t say what you think.  Before I reply to this letter we must go into new lodgings, to give them as our address.  The first business to-morrow morning will be to look for the gayest house we can find; and Captain Flower and this little cabin of his must be things we have never known.’

The next day after breakfast they accordingly sallied forth.

Knollsea had recently begun to attract notice in the world.  It had this year undergone visitation from a score of professional gentlemen and their wives, a minor canon, three marine painters, seven young ladies with books in their hands, and nine-and-thirty babies.  Hence a few lodging-houses, of a dash and pretentiousness far beyond the mark of the old cottages which formed the original substance of the village, had been erected to meet the wants of such as these.  To a building of this class Ethelberta now bent her steps, and the crush of the season having departed in the persons of three-quarters of the above-named visitors, who went away by a coach, a van, and a couple of wagonettes one morning, she found no difficulty in arranging for a red and yellow streaked villa, which was so bright and glowing that the sun seemed to be shining upon it even on a cloudy day, and the ruddiest native looked pale when standing by its walls.  It was not without regret that she renounced the sailor’s pretty cottage for this porticoed and balconied dwelling; but her lines were laid down clearly at last, and thither she removed forthwith.

From this brand-new house did Ethelberta pen the letter fixing the time at which she would be pleased to see Lord Mountclere.

When the hour drew nigh enormous force of will was required to keep her perturbation down.  She had not distinctly told Picotee of the object of the viscount’s visit, but Picotee guessed nearly enough.  Ethelberta was upon the whole better pleased that the initiative had again come from him than if the first step in the new campaign had been her sending the explanatory letter, as intended and promised.  She had thought almost directly after the interview at Rouen that to enlighten him by writing a confession in cold blood, according to her first intention, would be little less awkward for her in the method of telling than in the facts to be told.

So the last hair was arranged and the last fold adjusted, and she sat down to await a new page of her history.  Picotee sat with her, under orders to go into the next room when Lord Mountclere should call; and Ethelberta determined to waste no time, directly he began to make advances, in clearing up the phenomena of her existence to him; to the end that no fact which, in the event of his taking her to wife, could be used against her as an example of concealment, might remain unrelated.  The collapse of his attachment under the test might, however, form the grand climax of such a play as this.

The day was rather cold for the season, and Ethelberta sat by a fire; but the windows were open, and Picotee was amusing herself on the balcony outside.  The hour struck: Ethelberta fancied she could hear the wheels of a carriage creeping up the steep ascent which led to the drive before the door.

‘Is it he?’ she said quickly.

‘No,’ said Picotee, whose indifference contrasted strangely with the restlessness of her who was usually the coolest.  ‘It is a man shaking down apples in the garden over the wall.’

They lingered on till some three or four minutes had gone by.  ‘Surely that’s a carriage?’ said Ethelberta, then.

‘I think it is,’ said Picotee outside, stretching her neck forward as far as she could.  ‘No, it is the men on the beach dragging up their boats; they expect wind to-night.’

‘How wearisome!  Picotee, you may as well come inside; if he means to call he will; but he ought to be here by this time.’

It was only once more, and that some time later that she again said ‘Listen!’

‘That’s not the noise of a carriage; it is the fizz of a rocket.  The coastguardsmen are practising the life-apparatus to-day, to be ready for the autumn wrecks.’

‘Ah!’ said Ethelberta, her face clearing up.  Hers had not been a sweetheart’s impatience, but her mood had intensified during these minutes of suspense to a harassing mistrust of her man-compelling power, which was, if that were possible, more gloomy than disappointed love.  ‘I know now where he is.  That operation with the cradle-apparatus is very interesting, and he is stopping to see it. . . .  But I shall not wait indoors much longer, whatever he may be stopping to see.  It is very unaccountable, and vexing, after moving into this new house too.  We were much more comfortable in the old one.  In keeping any previous appointment in which I have been concerned he has been ridiculously early.’

‘Shall I run round?’ said Picotee, ‘and if he is not watching them we will go out.’

‘Very well,’ said her sister.

The time of Picotee’s absence seemed an age.  Ethelberta heard the roar of another rocket, and still Picotee did not return.  ‘What can the girl be thinking of?’ she mused. . . .  ‘What a half-and-half policy mine has been!  Thinking of marrying for position, and yet not making it my rigid plan to secure the man the first moment that he made his offer.  So I lose the comfort of having a soul above worldliness, and my compensation for not having it likewise!’  A minute or two more and in came Picotee.

‘What has kept you so long—and how excited you look,’ said Ethelberta.

‘I thought I would stay a little while, as I had never seen a rocket-apparatus,’ said Picotee, faintly and strangely.

‘But is he there?’ asked her sister impatiently.

‘Yes—he was.  He’s gone now!’

‘Lord Mountclere?’

‘No.  There is no old man there at all.  Mr Julian was there.’

A little ‘Ah!’ came from Ethelberta, like a note from a storm-bird at night.  She turned round and went into the back room.  ‘Is Mr. Julian going to call here?’ she inquired, coming forward again.

‘No—he’s gone by the steamboat.  He was only passing through on his way to Sandbourne, where he is gone to settle a small business relating to his father’s affairs.  He was not in Knollsea ten minutes, owing to something which detained him on the way.’

‘Did he inquire for me?’

‘No.  And only think, Ethelberta—such a remarkable thing has happened, though I nearly forgot to tell you.  He says that coming along the road he was overtaken by a carriage, and when it had just passed him one of the horses shied, pushed the other down a slope, and overturned the carriage.  One wheel came off and trundled to the bottom of the hill by itself.  Christopher of course ran up, and helped out of the carriage an old gentleman—now do you know what’s likely?’

‘It was Lord Mountclere.  I am glad that’s the cause,’ said Ethelberta involuntarily.

‘I imagined you would suppose it to be Lord Mountclere.  But Mr. Julian did not know the gentleman, and said nothing about who he might be.’

‘Did he describe him?’

‘Not much—just a little.’

‘Well?’

‘He said he was a sly old dog apparently, to hear how he swore in whispers.  This affair is what made Mr. Julian so late that he had no time to call here.  Lord Mountclere’s ankle—if it was Lord Mountclere—was badly sprained.  But the servants were not injured beyond a scratch on the coachman’s face.  Then they got another carriage and drove at once back again.  It must be he, or else why is he not come?  It is a pity, too, that Mr. Julian was hindered by this, so that there was no opportunity for him to bide a bit in Knollsea.’

Ethelberta was not disposed to believe that Christopher would have called, had time favoured him to the utmost.  Between himself and her there was that kind of division which is more insurmountable than enmity; for estrangements produced by good judgment will last when those of feeling break down in smiles.  Not the lovers who part in passion, but the lovers who part in friendship, are those who most frequently part for ever.

‘Did you tell Mr. Julian that the injured gentleman was possibly Lord Mountclere, and that he was coming here?’ said Ethelberta.

‘I made no remark at all—I did not think of him till afterwards.’

The inquiry was hardly necessary, for Picotee’s words would dry away like a brook in the sands when she held conversation with Christopher.

As they had anticipated, the sufferer was no other than their intending visitor.  Next morning there was a note explaining the accident, and expressing its writer’s suffering from the cruel delay as greater than that from the swollen ankle, which was progressing favourably.

Nothing further was heard of Lord Mountclere for more than a week, when she received another letter, which put an end to her season of relaxation, and once more braced her to the contest.  This epistle was very courteously written, and in point of correctness, propriety, and gravity, might have come from the quill of a bishop.  Herein the old nobleman gave a further description of the accident, but the main business of the communication was to ask her if, since he was not as yet very active, she would come to Enckworth Court and delight himself and a small group of friends who were visiting there.

She pondered over the letter as she walked by the shore that day, and after some hesitation decided to go.

38. ENCKWORTH COURT

It was on a dull, stagnant, noiseless afternoon of autumn that Ethelberta first crossed the threshold of Enckworth Court.  The daylight was so lowered by the impervious roof of cloud overhead that it scarcely reached further into Lord Mountclere’s entrance-hall than to the splays of the windows, even but an hour or two after midday; and indoors the glitter of the fire reflected itself from the very panes, so inconsiderable were the opposing rays.

Enckworth Court, in its main part, had not been standing more than a hundred years.  At that date the weakened portions of the original mediaeval structure were pulled down and cleared away, old jambs being carried off for rick-staddles, and the foliated timbers of the hall roof making themselves useful as fancy chairs in the summer-houses of rising inns.  A new block of masonry was built up from the ground of such height and lordliness that the remnant of the old pile left standing became as a mere cup-bearer and culinary menial beside it.  The rooms in this old fragment, which had in times past been considered sufficiently dignified for dining-hall, withdrawing-room, and so on, were now reckoned barely high enough for sculleries, servants’ hall, and laundries, the whole of which were arranged therein.

The modern portion had been planned with such a total disregard of association, that the very rudeness of the contrast gave an interest to the mass which it might have wanted had perfect harmony been attempted between the old nucleus and its adjuncts, a probable result if the enlargement had taken place later on in time.  The issue was that the hooded windows, simple string-courses, and random masonry of the Gothic workman, stood elbow to elbow with the equal-spaced ashlar, architraves, and fasciae of the Classic addition, each telling its distinct tale as to stage of thought and domestic habit without any of those artifices of blending or restoration by which the seeker for history in stones will be utterly hoodwinked in time to come.

To the left of the door and vestibule which Ethelberta passed through rose the principal staircase, constructed of a freestone so milk-white and delicately moulded as to be easily conceived in the lamplight as of biscuit-ware.  Who, unacquainted with the secrets of geometrical construction, could imagine that, hanging so airily there, to all appearance supported on nothing, were twenty or more tons dead weight of stone, that would have made a prison for an elephant if so arranged?  The art which produced this illusion was questionable, but its success was undoubted.  ‘How lovely!’ said Ethelberta, as she looked at the fairy ascent.  ‘His staircase alone is worth my hand!’

Passing along by the colonnade, which partly fenced the staircase from the visitor, the saloon was reached, an apartment forming a double cube.  About the left-hand end of this were grouped the drawing-rooms and library; while on the right was the dining-hall, with billiard, smoking, and gun rooms in mysterious remoteness beyond.

Without attempting to trace an analogy between a man and his mansion, it may be stated that everything here, though so dignified and magnificent, was not conceived in quite the true and eternal spirit of art.  It was a house in which Pugin would have torn his hair.  Those massive blocks of red-veined marble lining the hall—emulating in their surface-glitter the Escalier de Marbre at Versailles—were cunning imitations in paint and plaster by workmen brought from afar for the purpose, at a prodigious expense, by the present viscount’s father, and recently repaired and re-varnished.  The dark green columns and pilasters corresponding were brick at the core.  Nay, the external walls, apparently of massive and solid freestone, were only veneered with that material, being, like the pillars, of brick within.

To a stone mask worn by a brick face a story naturally appertained—one which has since done service in other quarters.  When the vast addition had just been completed King George visited Enckworth.  Its owner pointed out the features of its grand architectural attempt, and waited for commendation.

‘Brick, brick, brick,’ said the king.

The Georgian Lord Mountclere blushed faintly, albeit to his very poll, and said nothing more about his house that day.  When the king was gone he sent frantically for the craftsmen recently dismissed, and soon the green lawns became again the colour of a Nine-Elms cement wharf.  Thin freestone slabs were affixed to the whole series of fronts by copper cramps and dowels, each one of substance sufficient to have furnished a poor boy’s pocket with pennies for a month, till not a speck of the original surface remained, and the edifice shone in all the grandeur of massive masonry that was not massive at all.  But who remembered this save the builder and his crew? and as long as nobody knew the truth, pretence looked just as well.

What was honest in Enckworth Court was that portion of the original edifice which still remained, now degraded to subservient uses.  Where the untitled Mountclere of the White Rose faction had spread his knees over the brands, when the place was a castle and not a court, the still-room maid now simmered her preserves; and where Elizabethan mothers and daughters of that sturdy line had tapestried the love-scenes of Isaac and Jacob, boots and shoes were now cleaned and coals stowed away.

Lord Mountclere had so far recovered from the sprain as to be nominally quite well, under pressure of a wish to receive guests.  The sprain had in one sense served him excellently.  He had now a reason, apart from that of years, for walking with his stick, and took care to let the reason be frequently known.  To-day he entertained a larger number of persons than had been assembled within his walls for a great length of time.

Until after dinner Ethelberta felt as if she were staying at an hotel.  Few of the people whom she had met at the meeting of the Imperial Association greeted her here.  The viscount’s brother was not present, but Sir Cyril Blandsbury and his wife were there, a lively pair of persons, entertaining as actors, and friendly as dogs.  Beyond these all the faces and figures were new to her, though they were handsome and dashing enough to satisfy a court chronicler.  Ethelberta, in a dress sloped about as high over the shoulder as would have drawn approval from Reynolds, and expostulation from Lely, thawed and thawed each friend who came near her, and sent him or her away smiling; yet she felt a little surprise.  She had seldom visited at a country-house, and knew little of the ordinary composition of a group of visitors within its walls; but the present assemblage seemed to want much of that old-fashioned stability and quaint monumental dignity she had expected to find under this historical roof.  Nobody of her entertainer’s own rank appeared.  Not a single clergyman was there.  A tendency to talk Walpolean scandal about foreign courts was particularly manifest.  And although tropical travellers, Indian officers and their wives, courteous exiles, and descendants of Irish kings, were infinitely more pleasant than Lord Mountclere’s landed neighbours would probably have been, to such a cosmopolite as Ethelberta a calm Tory or old Whig company would have given a greater treat.  They would have struck as gratefully upon her senses as sylvan scenery after crags and cliffs, or silence after the roar of a cataract.

It was evening, and all these personages at Enckworth Court were merry, snug, and warm within its walls.  Dinner-time had passed, and everything had gone on well, when Mrs. Tara O’Fanagan, who had a gold-clamped tooth, which shone every now and then, asked Ethelberta if she would amuse them by telling a story, since nobody present, except Lord Mountclere, had ever heard one from her lips.

Seeing that Ethelberta had been working at that art as a profession, it can hardly be said that the question was conceived with tact, though it was put with grace.  Lord Mountclere evidently thought it objectionable, for he looked unhappy.  To only one person in the brilliant room did the request appear as a timely accident, and that was to Ethelberta herself.  Her honesty was always making war upon her manoeuvres, and shattering their delicate meshes, to her great inconvenience and delay.  Thus there arose those devious impulses and tangential flights which spoil the works of every would-be schemer who instead of being wholly machine is half heart.  One of these now was to show herself as she really was, not only to Lord Mountclere, but to his friends assembled, whom, in her ignorance, she respected more than they deserved, and so get rid of that self-reproach which had by this time reached a morbid pitch, through her over-sensitiveness to a situation in which a large majority of women and men would have seen no falseness.

Full of this curious intention, she quietly assented to the request, and laughingly bade them put themselves in listening order.

‘An old story will suit us,’ said the lady who had importuned her.  ‘We have never heard one.’

‘No; it shall be quite new,’ she replied.  ‘One not yet made public; though it soon will be.’

The narrative began by introducing to their notice a girl of the poorest and meanest parentage, the daughter of a serving-man, and the fifth of ten children.  She graphically recounted, as if they were her own, the strange dreams and ambitious longings of this child when young, her attempts to acquire education, partial failures, partial successes, and constant struggles; instancing how, on one of these occasions, the girl concealed herself under a bookcase of the library belonging to the mansion in which her father served as footman, and having taken with her there, like a young Fawkes, matches and a halfpenny candle, was going to sit up all night reading when the family had retired, until her father discovered and prevented her scheme.  Then followed her experiences as nursery-governess, her evening lessons under self-selected masters, and her ultimate rise to a higher grade among the teaching sisterhood.  Next came another epoch.  To the mansion in which she was engaged returned a truant son, between whom and the heroine an attachment sprang up.  The master of the house was an ambitious gentleman just knighted, who, perceiving the state of their hearts, harshly dismissed the homeless governess, and rated the son, the consequence being that the youthful pair resolved to marry secretly, and carried their resolution into effect.  The runaway journey came next, and then a moving description of the death of the young husband, and the terror of the bride.

The guests began to look perplexed, and one or two exchanged whispers.  This was not at all the kind of story that they had expected; it was quite different from her usual utterances, the nature of which they knew by report.  Ethelberta kept her eye upon Lord Mountclere.  Soon, to her amazement, there was that in his face which told her that he knew the story and its heroine quite well.  When she delivered the sentence ending with the professedly fictitious words: ‘I thus was reduced to great distress, and vainly cast about me for directions what to do,’ Lord Mountclere’s manner became so excited and anxious that it acted reciprocally upon Ethelberta; her voice trembled, she moved her lips but uttered nothing.  To bring the story up to the date of that very evening had been her intent, but it was beyond her power.  The spell was broken; she blushed with distress and turned away, for the folly of a disclosure here was but too apparent.

Though every one saw that she had broken down, none of them appeared to know the reason why, or to have the clue to her performance.  Fortunately Lord Mountclere came to her aid.

‘Let the first part end here,’ he said, rising and approaching her.  ‘We have been well entertained so far.  I could scarcely believe that the story I was listening to was utterly an invention, so vividly does Mrs. Petherwin bring the scenes before our eyes.  She must now be exhausted; we will have the remainder to-morrow.’

They all agreed that this was well, and soon after fell into groups, and dispersed about the rooms.  When everybody’s attention was thus occupied Lord Mountclere whispered to Ethelberta tremulously, ‘Don’t tell more: you think too much of them: they are no better than you!  Will you meet me in the little winter garden two minutes hence?  Pass through that door, and along the glass passage.’  He himself left the room by an opposite door.

She had not set three steps in the warm snug octagon of glass and plants when he appeared on the other side.

‘You knew it all before!’ she said, looking keenly at him.  ‘Who told you, and how long have you known it?’

‘Before yesterday or last week,’ said Lord Mountclere.  ‘Even before we met in France.  Why are you so surprised?’

Ethelberta had been surprised, and very greatly, to find him, as it were, secreted in the very rear of her position.  That nothing she could tell was new to him was a good deal to think of, but it was little beside the recollection that he had actually made his first declaration in the face of that knowledge of her which she had supposed so fatal to all her matrimonial ambitions.

‘And now only one point remains to be settled,’ he said, taking her hand.  ‘You promised at Rouen that at our next interview you would honour me with a decisive reply—one to make me happy for ever.’

‘But my father and friends?’ said she.

‘Are nothing to be concerned about.  Modern developments have shaken up the classes like peas in a hopper.  An annuity, and a comfortable cottage—’

‘My brothers are workmen.’

‘Manufacture is the single vocation in which a man’s prospects may be said to be illimitable.  Hee-hee!—they may buy me up before they die!  And now what stands in the way?  It would take fifty alliances with fifty families so little disreputable as yours, darling, to drag mine down.’

Ethelberta had anticipated the scene, and settled her course; what had to be said and done here was mere formality; yet she had been unable to go straight to the assent required.  However, after these words of self-depreciation, which were let fall as much for her own future ease of conscience as for his present warning, she made no more ado.

‘I shall think it a great honour to be your wife,’ she said simply.

39. KNOLLSEA—MELCHESTER

The year was now moving on apace, but Ethelberta and Picotee chose to remain at Knollsea, in the brilliant variegated brick and stone villa to which they had removed in order to be in keeping with their ascending fortunes.  Autumn had begun to make itself felt and seen in bolder and less subtle ways than at first.  In the morning now, on coming downstairs, in place of a yellowish-green leaf or two lying in a corner of the lowest step, which had been the only previous symptoms around the house, she saw dozens of them playing at corkscrews in the wind, directly the door was opened.  Beyond, towards the sea, the slopes and scarps that had been muffled with a thick robe of cliff herbage, were showing their chill grey substance through the withered verdure, like the background of velvet whence the pile has been fretted away.  Unexpected breezes broomed and rasped the smooth bay in evanescent patches of stippled shade, and, besides the small boats, the ponderous lighters used in shipping stone were hauled up the beach in anticipation of the equinoctial attack.

A few days after Ethelberta’s reception at Enckworth, an improved stanhope, driven by Lord Mountclere himself, climbed up the hill until it was opposite her door.  A few notes from a piano softly played reached his ear as he descended from his place: on being shown in to his betrothed, he could perceive that she had just left the instrument.  Moreover, a tear was visible in her eye when she came near him.

They discoursed for several minutes in the manner natural between a defenceless young widow and an old widower in Lord Mountclere’s position to whom she was plighted—a great deal of formal considerateness making itself visible on her part, and of extreme tenderness on his.  While thus occupied, he turned to the piano, and casually glanced at a piece of music lying open upon it.  Some words of writing at the top expressed that it was the composer’s original copy, presented by him, Christopher Julian, to the author of the song.  Seeing that he noticed the sheet somewhat lengthily, Ethelberta remarked that it had been an offering made to her a long time ago—a melody written to one of her own poems.

‘In the writing of the composer,’ observed Lord Mountclere, with interest.  ‘An offering from the musician himself—very gratifying and touching.  Mr. Christopher Julian is the name I see upon it, I believe?  I knew his father, Dr. Julian, a Sandbourne man, if I recollect.’

‘Yes,’ said Ethelberta placidly.  But it was really with an effort.  The song was the identical one which Christopher sent up to her from Sandbourne when the fire of her hope burnt high for less material ends; and the discovery of the sheet among her music that day had started eddies of emotion for some time checked.

‘I am sorry you have been grieved,’ said Lord Mountclere, with gloomy restlessness.

‘Grieved?’ said Ethelberta.

‘Did I not see a tear there? or did my eyes deceive me?’

‘You might have seen one.’

‘Ah! a tear, and a song.  I think—’

‘You naturally think that a woman who cries over a man’s gift must be in love with the giver?’  Ethelberta looked him serenely in the face.

Lord Mountclere’s jealous suspicions were considerably shaken.

‘Not at all,’ he said hastily, as if ashamed.  ‘One who cries over a song is much affected by its sentiment.’

‘Do you expect authors to cry over their own words?’ she inquired, merging defence in attack.  ‘I am afraid they don’t often do that.’

‘You would make me uneasy.’

‘On the contrary, I would reassure you.  Are you not still doubting?’ she asked, with a pleasant smile.

‘I cannot doubt you!’

‘Swear, like a faithful knight.’

‘I swear, my fairy, my flower!’

After this the old man appeared to be pondering; indeed, his thoughts could hardly be said to be present when he uttered the words.  For though the tabernacle was getting shaky by reason of years and merry living, so that what was going on inside might often be guessed without by the movement of the hangings, as in a puppet-show with worn canvas, he could be quiet enough when scheming any plot of particular neatness, which had less emotion than impishness in it.  Such an innocent amusement he was pondering now.

Before leaving her, he asked if she would accompany him to a morning instrumental concert at Melchester, which was to take place in the course of that week for the benefit of some local institution.

‘Melchester,’ she repeated faintly, and observed him as searchingly as it was possible to do without exposing herself to a raking fire in return.  Could he know that Christopher was living there, and was this said in prolongation of his recent suspicion?  But Lord Mountclere’s face gave no sign.

‘You forget one fatal objection,’ said she; ‘the secrecy in which it is imperative that the engagement between us should be kept.’

‘I am not known in Melchester without my carriage; nor are you.’

‘We may be known by somebody on the road.’

‘Then let it be arranged in this way.  I will not call here to take you up, but will meet you at the station at Anglebury; and we can go on together by train without notice.  Surely there can be no objection to that?  It would be mere prudishness to object, since we are to become one so shortly.’  He spoke a little impatiently.  It was plain that he particularly wanted her to go to Melchester.

‘I merely meant that there was a chance of discovery in our going out together.  And discovery means no marriage.’  She was pale now, and sick at heart, for it seemed that the viscount must be aware that Christopher dwelt at that place, and was about to test her concerning him.

‘Why does it mean no marriage?’ said he.

‘My father might, and almost certainly would, object to it.  Although he cannot control me, he might entreat me.’

‘Why would he object?’ said Lord Mountclere uneasily, and somewhat haughtily.

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you will be my wife—say again that you will.’

‘I will.’

He breathed.  ‘He will not object—hee-hee!’ he said.  ‘O no—I think you will be mine now.’

‘I have said so.  But look to me all the same.’

‘You malign yourself, dear one.  But you will meet me at Anglebury, as I wish, and go on to Melchester with me?’

‘I shall be pleased to—if my sister may accompany me.’

‘Ah—your sister.  Yes, of course.’

They settled the time of the journey, and when the visit had been stretched out as long as it reasonably could be with propriety, Lord Mountclere took his leave.

When he was again seated on the driving-phaeton which he had brought that day, Lord Mountclere looked gleeful, and shrewd enough in his own opinion to outwit Mephistopheles.  As soon as they were ascending a hill, and he could find time to free his hand, he pulled off his glove, and drawing from his pocket a programme of the Melchester concert referred to, contemplated therein the name of one of the intended performers.  The name was that of Mr. C. Julian.  Replacing it again, he looked ahead, and some time after murmured with wily mirth, ‘An excellent test—a lucky thought!’

Nothing of importance occurred during the intervening days.  At two o’clock on the appointed afternoon Ethelberta stepped from the train at Melchester with the viscount, who had met her as proposed; she was followed behind by Picotee.

The concert was to be held at the Town-hall half-an-hour later.  They entered a fly in waiting, and secure from recognition, were driven leisurely in that direction, Picotee silent and absorbed with her own thoughts.

‘There’s the Cathedral,’ said Lord Mountclere humorously, as they caught a view of one of its towers through a street leading into the Close.

‘Yes.’

‘It boasts of a very fine organ.’

‘Ah.’

‘And the organist is a clever young man.’

‘Oh.’

Lord Mountclere paused a moment or two.  ‘By the way, you may remember that he is the Mr. Julian who set your song to music!’

‘I recollect it quite well.’  Her heart was horrified and she thought Lord Mountclere must be developing into an inquisitor, which perhaps he was.  But none of this reached her face.

They turned in the direction of the Hall, were set down, and entered.

The large assembly-room set apart for the concert was upstairs, and it was possible to enter it in two ways: by the large doorway in front of the landing, or by turning down a side passage leading to council-rooms and subsidiary apartments of small size, which were allotted to performers in any exhibition; thus they could enter from one of these directly upon the platform, without passing through the audience.

‘Will you seat yourselves here?’ said Lord Mountclere, who, instead of entering by the direct door, had brought the young women round into this green-room, as it may be called.  ‘You see we have come in privately enough; when the musicians arrive we can pass through behind them, and step down to our seats from the front.’

The players could soon be heard tuning in the next room.  Then one came through the passage-room where the three waited, and went in, then another, then another.  Last of all came Julian.

Ethelberta sat facing the door, but Christopher, never in the least expecting her there, did not recognize her till he was quite inside.  When he had really perceived her to be the one who had troubled his soul so many times and long, the blood in his face—never very much—passed off and left it, like the shade of a cloud.  Between them stood a table covered with green baize, which, reflecting upwards a band of sunlight shining across the chamber, flung upon his already white features the virescent hues of death.  The poor musician, whose person, much to his own inconvenience, constituted a complete breviary of the gentle emotions, looked as if he were going to fall down in a faint.

Ethelberta flung at Lord Mountclere a look which clipped him like pincers: he never forgot it as long as he lived.

‘This is your pretty jealous scheme—I see it!’ she hissed to him, and without being able to control herself went across to Julian.

But a slight gasp came from behind the door where Picotee had been sitting.  Ethelberta and Lord Mountclere looked that way: and behold, Picotee had nearly swooned.

Ethelberta’s show of passion went as quickly as it had come, for she felt that a splendid triumph had been put into her hands.  ‘Now do you see the truth?’ she whispered to Lord Mountclere without a drachm of feeling; pointing to Christopher and then to Picotee—as like as two snowdrops now.

‘I do, I do,’ murmured the viscount hastily.

They both went forward to help Christopher in restoring the fragile Picotee: he had set himself to that task as suddenly as he possibly could to cover his own near approach to the same condition.  Not much help was required, the little girl’s indisposition being quite momentary, and she sat up in the chair again.

‘Are you better?’ said Ethelberta to Christopher.

‘Quite well—quite,’ he said, smiling faintly.  ‘I am glad to see you.  I must, I think, go into the next room now.’  He bowed and walked out awkwardly.

‘Are you better, too?’ she said to Picotee.

‘Quite well,’ said Picotee.

‘You are quite sure you know between whom the love lies now—eh?’ Ethelberta asked in a sarcastic whisper of Lord Mountclere.

‘I am—beyond a doubt,’ murmured the anxious nobleman; he feared that look of hers, which was not less dominant than irresistible.

Some additional moments given to thought on the circumstances rendered Ethelberta still more indignant and intractable.  She went out at the door by which they had entered, along the passage, and down the stairs.  A shuffling footstep followed, but she did not turn her head.  When they reached the bottom of the stairs the carriage had gone, their exit not being expected till two hours later.  Ethelberta, nothing daunted, swept along the pavement and down the street in a turbulent prance, Lord Mountclere trotting behind with a jowl reduced to a mere nothing by his concern at the discourtesy into which he had been lured by jealous whisperings.

‘My dearest—forgive me; I confess I doubted you—but I was beside myself,’ came to her ears from over her shoulder.  But Ethelberta walked on as before.

Lord Mountclere sighed like a poet over a ledger.  ‘An old man—who is not very old—naturally torments himself with fears of losing—no, no—it was an innocent jest of mine—you will forgive a joke—hee-hee?’ he said again, on getting no reply.

‘You had no right to mistrust me!’

‘I do not—you did not blench.  You should have told me before that it was your sister and not yourself who was entangled with him.’

‘You brought me to Melchester on purpose to confront him!’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Are you not ashamed?’

‘I am satisfied.  It is better to know the truth by any means than to die of suspense; better for us both—surely you see that?’

They had by this time got to the end of a long street, and into a deserted side road by which the station could be indirectly reached.  Picotee appeared in the distance as a mere distracted speck of girlhood, following them because not knowing what else to do in her sickness of body and mind.  Once out of sight here, Ethelberta began to cry.

‘Ethelberta,’ said Lord Mountclere, in an agony of trouble, ‘don’t be vexed!  It was an inconsiderate trick—I own it.  Do what you will, but do not desert me now!  I could not bear it—you would kill me if you were to leave me.  Anything, but be mine.’

Ethelberta continued her way, and drying her eyes entered the station, where, on searching the time-tables, she found there would be no train for Anglebury for the next two hours.  Then more slowly she turned towards the town again, meeting Picotee and keeping in her company.

Lord Mountclere gave up the chase, but as he wished to get into the town again, he followed in the same direction.  When Ethelberta had proceeded as far as the Red Lion Hotel, she turned towards it with her companion, and being shown to a room, the two sisters shut themselves in.  Lord Mountclere paused and entered the White Hart, the rival hotel to the Red Lion, which stood in an adjoining street.

Having secluded himself in an apartment here, walked from window to window awhile, and made himself generally uncomfortable, he sat down to the writing materials on the table, and concocted a note:—

‘WHITE HART HOTEL.

‘MY DEAR MRS. PETHERWIN,—You do not mean to be so cruel as to break your plighted word to me?  Remember, there is no love without much jealousy, and lovers are ever full of sighs and misgiving.  I have owned to as much contrition as can reasonably be expected.  I could not endure the suspicion that you loved another.—Yours always,

‘MOUNTCLERE.’

This he sent, watching from the window its progress along the street.  He awaited anxiously for an answer, and waited long.  It was nearly twenty minutes before he could hear a messenger approaching the door.  Yes—she had actually sent a reply; he prized it as if it had been the first encouragement he had ever in his life received from woman:—

‘MY LORD’ (wrote Ethelberta),—‘I am not prepared at present to enter into the question of marriage at all.