Ethelberta continued her way, and drying her eyes entered the station, where, on searching the time-tables, she found that there would be no train to 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 Mitre 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 Crown, the rival hotel to the Mitre, which stood on the opposite side of the way.

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:

"MY DEAR MRS. PETHERWIN,

"Crown Hotel.

"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 misgivings. 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 across the street. He waited 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. The incident which has occurred affords me every excuse for withdrawing my promise, since it was given under misapprehensions on a point that materially affects my happiness.

"E. PETHERWIN."

"Ho-ho-ho-Miss Hoity-toity!" said Lord Mountclere, trotting up and down. But, remembering it was her June against his November, this did not last long, and he frantically replied:

"My darling-I cannot release you-I must do anything to keep my treasure. Will you not see me for a few minutes, and let bygones go to the winds?"

Was ever a thrush so safe in a cherry-net before!

The messenger came back with the information that Mrs. Petherwin

had taken a walk to the Close, her companion only remaining at the hotel. There being nothing else left for the viscount to do, he put on his hat, and went out on foot in the same direction. He had not walked far when he saw Ethelberta moving slowly along the High Street before him.

Ethelberta was at this hour wandering without any fixed intention beyond that of consuming time. She was very wretched, and very indifferent the former when thinking of her past, the latter when thinking of the days to come. While she walked thus, unconscious of the streets and their groups of other wayfarers, she saw Christopher emerge from a door not many paces in advance, and close it behind him he stood for a moment on the step before descending into the road.

She could not, even had she wished it, easily check her progress without rendering the chance of his perceiving her still more certain. But she did not wish any such thing, and it made little difference, for he had already seen her in taking his survey round, and came down from the door to her side. It was impossible for anything formal to pass between them now.

"You are not at the concert, Mr. Julian?" she said. "I am glad to have a better opportunity of speaking to you, and of asking for your sister. Unfortunately there is not time for us to call upon her to-day."

"Thank you; but it makes no difference," said Julian, with somewhat sad reserve. "I will tell her I have met you: she is away from home just at present." And finding that Ethelberta did not rejoin immediately, he observed, "The assistant-organist has taken my place at the concert, as it was arranged he should do after the opening part. I am now going to the Cathedral for the afternoon service. You are going there too?"

"I thought of looking at the interior for a moment."

So they went on side by side, saying little; for it was a situation in which scarcely any appropriate thing could be spoken. Ethelberta was the less reluctant to walk in his company because of the provocation to skittishness that Lord Mountclere had given, a provocation which she still resented. But she was far from wishing to increase his jealousy ; and yet this was what she was doing, Lord Mountclere being a perturbed witness of all that was passing now.

They turned the corner of the short street of connection which led under an archway to the Cathedral Close. Christopher seemed to warm up a little, and repeated the invitation. "You will come with your sister to see us before you leave?" he said. "We have tea at six." "We shall have left Melchester before that time. I am now only waiting for the train."

"You two have not come all the way from Knollsea alone?"
"Part of the way," said Ethelberta, evasively.

"And going back alone?"

"No. Only for the last five miles. At least, that was the arrangement-I am not quite sure if it holds good."

"You don't wish me to see you safely in the train?”

"It is not necessary: thank you very much. We are well used to getting about the world alone, and from Melchester to Knollsea is no serious journey, late or early . . . Yet I think I ought, in honesty, to tell you that we are not entirely by ourselves in Melchester to-day."

"I remember. I saw your friend-relative-in the room at the Town-hall. It did not occur to my mind for the moment that he was any other than a stranger standing there."

"He is not a relative," she said, with perplexity. "I hardly know, Christopher, how to explain to you my position here to-day, because of some difficulties that have arisen since we have been in the town, which may alter it entirely. On that account I will be less frank with you than I should like to be, considering how long we have known each other. It would be wrong, however, if I were not to tell you that there has been a possibility of my marriage with him."

"The elderly gentleman ?"

"Yes.

with him.

And I came here to-day in his company, intending to return
But you shall know all soon. Picotee shall write to Faith."

"I always think the Cathedral looks better from this point than from the point usually chosen by artists," he said, with nervous quickness, directing her glance upwards to the silent structure, now misty and unrelieved by either high light or deep shade. "We get the grouping of the chapels and choir-aisles more clearly shown-and the whole culminates to a more perfect pyramid from this spot-do you think so?" "Yes. I do."

A little further, and Christopher stopped to enter, when Ethelberta bade him farewell. "I thought at one time that our futures might have been different from what they are apparently becoming," he said then, regarding her as a stall-reader regards the brilliant book he cannot afford to buy. "But one gets weary of repining about that. I wish Picotee and yourself could see us oftener; I am as confirmed a bachelor now as Faith is an old maid. I wonder if-should the event you contemplate occur-you and he will visit us, or we shall ever visit you!"

Christopher was evidently imagining the elderly gentleman to be some retired farmer, or professional man already so intermixed with the metamorphic classes of society as not to be surprised or inconvenienced by her beginnings; one who wished to secure Ethelberta as on ornament to his parlour fire in a quiet spirit, and in no intoxicated mood regardless of issues. She could scarcely reply to his supposition; and the parting was what might have been predicated from a conversation so carefully

controlled.

Ethelberta, as she had intended, now went on further, and entering the nave began to inspect the sallow monuments which lined the grizzled pile. She did not perceive amid the shadows an old gentleman who

THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA.

375 had crept into the mouldy place as stealthily as a worm into a skull, and was keeping himself carefully beyond her observation. She continued to regard feature after feature till the choristers had filed in from the south side, and peals broke forth from the organ on the black oaken mass at the junction of nave and choir, shaking every cobweb in the dusky vaults, and Ethelberta's heart no less. She knew the fingers that were pressing out those rolling sounds, and knowing them, became absorbed in tracing their progress. To go towards the organ-loft was an act of unconsciousness, and she did not pause till she stood almost beneath it.

Ethelberta was awakened from vague imaginings by the close approach of the old gentleman alluded to, who spoke with a great deal ⚫ of agitation.

"I have been trying to meet with you," said Lord Mountclere. "Come, let us be friends again !-Ethelberta, I must not lose you. You cannot mean that the engagement shall be broken off?" He was far too desirous to possess her at any price now to run a second risk of exasperating her, and forbore to make any allusion to the recent pantomime between herself and Christopher that he had beheld, though it might reasonably have filled him with dread and petulance.

"I do not mean anything beyond this," said she. "That I entirely withdraw from it on the faintest sign that you have not abandoned such miserable jealous proceedings as those you adopted to-day."

"I have quite abandoned them. Will you come a little further this way, and walk in the aisle ? You do still agree to be mine?"

"If it gives you any pleasure, I do."

"Yes, yes. I implore that the marriage may be soon-very soon. The viscount spoke hastily, for the notes of the organ which were plunging into their ears ever and anon from the hands of his young rival seemed inconveniently and solemnly in the way of his suit.

"Say in a few days?-it is the only thing that will satisfy me."

"I am absolutely indifferent as to the day. If it pleases you to have it early I am willing."

"Dare I ask that it may be this week?" said the delighted old man. "I could not say that."

"But you can name the earliest day."

"I cannot now. We had better be going from here I think."

The Cathedral was filling with shadows, and cold breathings came round the piers, for it was November, and night very soon succeeds noon where noon is sobered to the pallor of eve. But the service was not yet over, and before quite leaving the building Ethelberta cast one other glance towards the organ, and thought of him behind it. At this moment her attention was arrested by the form of her sister Picotee, who came in at the north door, closed the lobby-wicket softly, and went lightly forwards to the choir. When within a few yards of it she paused by a pillar, and lingered there looking up at the organ as Ethelberta had done. No

sound was coming from the ponderous mass of tubes just then; but in a short space a whole crowd of tones spread from the instrument to accompany the words of a response. Picotee started at the burst of music as if taken in a dishonest action, and moved on in a manner intended to efface the lover's loiter of the preceding moments from her own consciousness no less than from other people's eyes.

"That little figure is my

"Do you see that?" said Ethelberta. dearest sister. Could you but ensure a marriage between her and him she listens to, I would do anything you wish!"

"That is indeed a gracious promise," said Lord Mountclere.

would you agree to what I asked just now?"

"Yes."

"When?" A gleeful spark accompanied this.
"As you requested."

"This week? The day after to-morrow?

"

"And

"If you will. But remember what lies on your side of the contract. I fancy I have given you in that a task beyond your powers."

"Well, darling, we are at one at last," said Lord Mountclere, rubbing his hand against his side. "And if my task is heavy, and I cannot guarantee the result, I can make it very probable. Marry me on Friday -the day after to-morrow, and I will do all that money and influence can effect to bring about their union."

"You solemnly promise? You will never cease to give me all the aid in your power until the thing is done?"

"I do solemnly promise on the conditions named."

"Very good. You will have ensured my fulfilment of my promise before I can ensure yours; but I take your word."

"You will marry me on Friday!

She gave him her band.

"Is it a covenant?" he asked.

"It is," said she.

Give me your hand upon it."

Lord Mountclere warmed from surface to centre as if he had drunk of hippocras, and after holding her hand for some moments, raised it gently to his lips.

"Two days-and you are mine," he said.

"That I believe I never shall be."

"Never shall be? Why, darling?"

"I don't know. Some catastrophe will prevent it. I shall be dead, perhaps."

"You distress me. Ah,--you meant me--you meant that I should be dead, because you think I am old! But that is a mistake-I am not

very old."

"I thought only of myself-nothing of you."

"Yes, I know. Dearest, it is dismal and chilling here-let us go." Ethelberta mechanically moved with him, and felt there was no retreating now. In the meantime the young ladykin whom the solemn