‘When did you first get to care for him, dear Berta?’

‘O—­when I had seen him once or twice.’

‘Goodness—­how quick you were!’

’Yes—­if I am in the mind for loving I am not to be hindered by shortness of acquaintanceship.’

‘Nor I neither!’ sighed Picotee.

’Nor any other woman.  We don’t need to know a man well in order to love him.  That’s only necessary when we want to leave off.’

‘O Berta—­you don’t believe that!’

’If a woman did not invariably form an opinion of her choice before she has half seen him, and love him before she has half formed an opinion, there would be no tears and pining in the whole feminine world, and poets would starve for want of a topic.  I don’t believe it, do you say?  Ah, well, we shall see.’

Picotee did not know what to say to this; and Ethelberta left the room to see about her duties as public story-teller, in which capacity she had undertaken to appear again this very evening.

20.  The neighbourhood of the hall—­the road home

London was illuminated by the broad full moon.  The pavements looked white as if mantled with snow; ordinary houses were sublimated to the rank of public buildings, public buildings to palaces, and the faces of women walking the streets to those of calendared saints and guardian-angels, by the pure bleaching light from the sky.

In the quiet little street where opened the private door of the Hall chosen by Ethelberta for her story-telling, a brougham was waiting.  The time was about eleven o’clock; and presently a lady came out from the building, the moonbeams forthwith flooding her face, which they showed to be that of the Story-teller herself.  She hastened across to the carriage, when a second thought arrested her motion:  telling the man-servant and a woman inside the brougham to wait for her, she wrapped up her features and glided round to the front of the house, where she paused to observe the carriages and cabs driving up to receive the fashionable crowd stepping down from the doors.  Standing here in the throng which her own talent and ingenuity had drawn together, she appeared to enjoy herself by listening for a minute or two to the names of several persons of more or less distinction as they were called out, and then regarded attentively the faces of others of lesser degree:  to scrutinize the latter was, as the event proved, the real object of the journey from round the corner.  When nearly every one had left the doors, she turned back disappointed.  Ethelberta had been fancying that her alienated lover Christopher was in the back rows to-night, but, as far as could now be observed, the hopeful supposition was a false one.

When she got round to the back again, a man came forward.  It was Ladywell, whom she had spoken to already that evening.  ’Allow me to bring you your note-book, Mrs. Petherwin:  I think you had forgotten it,’ he said.  ‘I assure you that nobody has handled it but myself.’