‘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