her: where to find a stable for the ass during the meeting, for
she had scarcely liked the idea of facing the whole body of lords and
gentlemen upon the animal's back. She now decided to retain her seat,
ride round the ruin, and go home again, without troubling further about
the movements of the Association or acquaintance with the members
composing it.

Accordingly Ethelberta crossed the bridge over the moat, and rode under
the first archway into the outer ward. As she had expected, not a soul
was here. The arrow-slits, portcullis-grooves, and staircases met her
eye as familiar friends, for in her childhood she had once paid a visit
to the spot. Ascending the green incline and through another arch into
the second ward, she still pressed on, till at last the ass was unable to
clamber an inch further. Here she dismounted, and tying him to a stone
which projected like a fang from a raw edge of wall, performed the
remainder of the ascent on foot. Once among the towers above, she became
so interested in the windy corridors, mildewed dungeons, and the tribe of
daws peering invidiously upon her from overhead, that she forgot the
flight of time.

Nearly three-quarters of an hour passed before she came out from the
immense walls, and looked from an opening to the front over the wide
expanse of the outer ward, by which she had ascended.

Ethelberta was taken aback to see there a file of shining carriages,
which had arrived during her seclusion in the keep. From these began to
burst a miscellany of many-coloured draperies, blue, buff, pied, and
black; they united into one, and crept up the incline like a cloud, which
then parted into fragments, dived into old doorways, and lost substance
behind projecting piles. Recognizing in this the ladies and gentlemen of
the meeting, her first thought was how to escape, for she was suddenly
overcome with dread to meet them all single-handed as she stood. She
drew back and hurried round to the side, as the laughter and voices of
the assembly began to be audible, and, more than ever vexed that she
could not have fallen in with them in some unobtrusive way, Ethelberta
found that they were immediately beneath her.

Venturing to peep forward again, what was her mortification at finding
them gathered in a ring, round no object of interest belonging to the
ruin, but round her faithful beast, who had loosened himself in some way
from the stone, and stood in the middle of a plat of grass,