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.