nly man who assisted you
yesterday?' She signified the valet as she spoke.

'It is,' said Cornelia.

When the passengers were taking their seats, and Ethelberta was thinking
whether she might not after all enter a second-class with Cornelia
instead of sitting solitary in a first because of an old man's proximity,
she heard a shuffling at her elbow, and the next moment found that he was
overtly observing her as if he had not done so in secret at all. She at
once gave him an unsurprised gesture of recognition. 'I saw you some
time ago; what a singular coincidence,' she said.

'A charming one,' said Lord Mountclere, smiling a half-minute smile, and
making as if he would take his hat off and would not quite. 'Perhaps we
must not call it coincidence entirely,' he continued; 'my journey, which
I have contemplated for some time, was not fixed this week altogether
without a thought of your presence on the road--hee-hee! Do you go far
to-day?'

'As far as Caen,' said Ethelberta.

'Ah! That's the end of my day's journey, too,' said Lord Mountclere.
They parted and took their respective places, Lord Mountclere choosing a
compartment next to the one Ethelberta was entering, and not, as she had
expected, attempting to join her.

Now she had instantly fancied when the viscount was speaking that there
were signs of some departure from his former respectful manner towards
her; and an enigma lay in that. At their earlier meetings he had never
ventured upon a distinct coupling of himself and herself as he had done
in his broad compliment to-day--if compliment it could be called. She
was not sure that he did not exceed his license in telling her
deliberately that he had meant to hover near her in a private journey
which she was taking without reference to him. She did not object to the
act, but to the avowal of the act; and, being as sensitive as a barometer
on signs affecting her social condition, it darted upon Ethelberta for
one little moment that he might possibly have heard a word or two about
her being nothing more nor less than one of a tribe of thralls; hence his
freedom of manner. Certainly a plain remark of that sort was exactly
what a susceptible peer might be supposed to say to a pretty woman of far
inferior degree. A rapid redness filled her face at the thought that he
might have smiled upon her as upon a domestic whom he was disposed to
chuck under the chin. 'But no,' she said. 'He would never have taken