‘The elderly gentleman?’

’Yes.  And I came here in his company, intending to return with him.  But you shall know all soon.  Picotee shall write to Faith.’

’I always think the Cathedral looks better from this point than from the point usually chosen by artists,’ he said, with nervous quickness, directing her glance upwards to the silent structure, now misty and unrelieved by either high light or deep shade.  ’We get the grouping of the chapels and choir-aisles more clearly shown—­and the whole culminates to a more perfect pyramid from this spot—­do you think so?’

‘Yes.  I do.’

A little further, and Christopher stopped to enter, when Ethelberta bade him farewell.  ’I thought at one time that our futures might have been different from what they are apparently becoming,’ he said then, regarding her as a stall-reader regards the brilliant book he cannot afford to buy.  ’But one gets weary of repining about that.  I wish Picotee and yourself could see us oftener; I am as confirmed a bachelor now as Faith is an old maid.  I wonder if—­should the event you contemplate occur—­you and he will ever visit us, or we shall ever visit you!’

Christopher was evidently imagining the elderly gentleman to be some retired farmer, or professional man already so intermixed with the metamorphic classes of society as not to be surprised or inconvenienced by her beginnings; one who wished to secure Ethelberta as an ornament to his parlour fire in a quiet spirit, and in no intoxicated mood regardless of issues.  She could scarcely reply to his supposition; and the parting was what might have been predicted from a conversation so carefully controlled.

Ethelberta, as she had intended, now went on further, and entering the nave began to inspect the sallow monuments which lined the grizzled pile.  She did not perceive amid the shadows an old gentleman who had crept into the mouldy place as stealthily as a worm into a skull, and was keeping himself carefully beyond her observation.  She continued to regard feature after feature till the choristers had filed in from the south side, and peals broke forth from the organ on the black oaken mass at the junction of nave and choir, shaking every cobweb in the dusky vaults, and Ethelberta’s heart no less.  She knew the fingers that were pressing out those rolling sounds, and knowing them, became absorbed in tracing their progress.  To go towards the organ-loft was an act of unconsciousness, and she did not pause till she stood almost beneath it.

Ethelberta was awakened from vague imaginings by the close approach of the old gentleman alluded to, who spoke with a great deal of agitation.

‘I have been trying to meet with you,’ said Lord Mountclere.  ’Come, let us be friends again!—­Ethelberta, I must not lose you!  You cannot mean that the engagement shall be broken off?’ He was far too desirous to possess her at any price now to run a second risk of exasperating her, and forbore to make any allusion to the recent pantomime between herself and Christopher that he had beheld, though it might reasonably have filled him with dread and petulance.