ress in the survey of the castle has not been far as yet,' Lord
Mountclere resumed; 'indeed, we have only just arrived, the weather this
morning being so unsettled. When you came up we were engaged in a
preliminary study of the poor animal you see there: how it could have got
up here we cannot understand.'

He pointed as he spoke to the donkey which had brought Ethelberta
thither, whereupon she was silent, and gazed at her untoward beast as if
she had never before beheld him.

The ass looked at Ethelberta as though he would say, 'Why don't you own
me, after safely bringing you over those weary hills?' But the pride and
emulation which had made her what she was would not permit her, as the
most lovely woman there, to take upon her own shoulders the ridicule that
had already been cast upon the ass. Had he been young and gaily
caparisoned, she might have done it; but his age, the clumsy trappings of
rustic make, and his needy woful look of hard servitude, were too much to
endure.

'Many come and picnic here,' she said serenely, 'and the animal may have
been left till they return from some walk.'

'True,' said Lord Mountclere, without the slightest suspicion of the
truth. The humble ass hung his head in his usual manner, and it demanded
little fancy from Ethelberta to imagine that he despised her. And then
her mind flew back to her history and extraction, to her father--perhaps
at that moment inventing a private plate-powder in an underground
pantry--and with a groan at her inconsistency in being ashamed of the
ass, she said in her heart, 'My God, what a thing am I!'

They then all moved on to another part of the castle, the viscount
busying himself round and round her person like the head scraper at a pig-
killing; and as they went indiscriminately mingled, jesting lightly or
talking in earnest, she beheld ahead of her the form of Neigh among the
rest.

Now, there could only be one reason on earth for Neigh's presence--her
remark that she might attend--for Neigh took no more interest in
antiquities than in the back of the moon. Ethelberta was a little
flurried; perhaps he had come to scold her, or to treat her badly in that
indefinable way of his by which he could make a woman feel as nothing
without any direct act at all. She was afraid of him, and, determining
to shun him, was thankful that Lord Mountclere was near, to take off the
edge of Neigh's manner towards her if he approached.

'Do you know in what