‘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.