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

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

‘Certainly not to-morrow.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ethelberta as she sat felt herself much less a Petherwin than a Chickerel, much less a poetess richly freighted with fancy than an adventuress with a nebulous prospect.  Neigh was one of the few men whose presence seemed to attenuate her dignity in some mysterious way to its very least proportions; and that act of espial, which had so quickly and inexplicably come to his knowledge, helped his influence still more.  She knew little of the nature of the town bachelor; there were opaque depths in him which her thoughts had never definitely plumbed.  Notwithstanding her exaltation to the atmosphere of the Petherwin family, Ethelberta was very far from having the thoroughbred London woman’s knowledge of sets, grades, coteries, cliques, forms, glosses, and niceties, particularly on the masculine side.  Setting the years from her infancy to her