She took down a well-known treatise on Utilitarianism which she had perused once before, and to which she had given her adherence ere any instance had arisen wherein she might wish to take it as a guide.  Here she desultorily searched for argument, and found it; but the application of her author’s philosophy to the marriage question was an operation of her own, as unjustifiable as it was likely in the circumstances.

‘The ultimate end,’ she read, ’with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people) is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality. . . .  This being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality.’

It was an open question, so far, whether her own happiness should or should not be preferred to that of others.  But that her personal interests were not to be considered as paramount appeared further on:—­

’The happiness which forms the standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent’s own happiness but that of all concerned.  As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.’

As to whose happiness was meant by that of ‘other people,’ ’all concerned,’ and so on, her luminous moralist soon enlightened her:—­

’The occasions on which any person (except one in a thousand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale—­in other words, to be a public benefactor—­are but exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on to consider public utility; in every other case private utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to attend to.’

And that these few persons should be those endeared to her by every domestic tie no argument was needed to prove.  That their happiness would be in proportion to her own well-doing, and power to remove their risks of indigence, required no proving either to her now.

By a sorry but unconscious misapplication of sound and wide reasoning did the active mind of Ethelberta thus find itself a solace.  At about the midnight hour she felt more fortified on the expediency of marriage with Lord Mountclere than she had done at all since musing on it.  In respect of the second query, whether or not, in that event, to conceal from Lord Mountclere the circumstances of her position till it should be too late for him to object to them, she found her conscience inconveniently in the way of her theory, and the oracle before her afforded no hint.  ’Ah—­it is a point for a casuist!’ she said.

An old treatise on Casuistry lay on the top shelf.  She opened it—­more from curiosity than from guidance this time, it must be observed—­at a chapter bearing on her own problem, ’The disciplina arcani, or, the doctrine of reserve.’