’Altered them again?  What are you going to be now—­not a poor person after all?’

’Indeed not.  And so I turn and turn.  Can you imagine what Lord Mountclere is coming for?  But don’t say what you think.  Before I reply to this letter we must go into new lodgings, to give them as our address.  The first business to-morrow morning will be to look for the gayest house we can find; and Captain Flower and this little cabin of his must be things we have never known.’

The next day after breakfast they accordingly sallied forth.

Knollsea had recently begun to attract notice in the world.  It had this year undergone visitation from a score of professional gentlemen and their wives, a minor canon, three marine painters, seven young ladies with books in their hands, and nine-and-thirty babies.  Hence a few lodging-houses, of a dash and pretentiousness far beyond the mark of the old cottages which formed the original substance of the village, had been erected to meet the wants of such as these.  To a building of this class Ethelberta now bent her steps, and the crush of the season having departed in the persons of three-quarters of the above-named visitors, who went away by a coach, a van, and a couple of wagonettes one morning, she found no difficulty in arranging for a red and yellow streaked villa, which was so bright and glowing that the sun seemed to be shining upon it even on a cloudy day, and the ruddiest native looked pale when standing by its walls.  It was not without regret that she renounced the sailor’s pretty cottage for this porticoed and balconied dwelling; but her lines were laid down clearly at last, and thither she removed forthwith.

From this brand-new house did Ethelberta pen the letter fixing the time at which she would be pleased to see Lord Mountclere.

When the hour drew nigh enormous force of will was required to keep her perturbation down.  She had not distinctly told Picotee of the object of the viscount’s visit, but Picotee guessed nearly enough.  Ethelberta was upon the whole better pleased that the initiative had again come from him than if the first step in the new campaign had been her sending the explanatory letter, as intended and promised.  She had thought almost directly after the interview at Rouen that to enlighten him by writing a confession in cold blood, according to her first intention, would be little less awkward for her in the method of telling than in the facts to be told.

So the last hair was arranged and the last fold adjusted, and she sat down to await a new page of her history.  Picotee sat with her, under orders to go into the next room when Lord Mountclere should call; and Ethelberta determined to waste no time, directly he began to make advances, in clearing up the phenomena of her existence to him; to the end that no fact which, in the event of his taking her to wife, could be used against her as an example of concealment, might remain unrelated.  The collapse of his attachment under the test might, however, form the grand climax of such a play as this.