nk I
will ask you to wait,' she added, not liking to dismiss Neigh in a hurry;
for she was not insensible to his perseverance in seeking her over all
these miles of sea and land; and secondly, she feared that if he were to
leave on the instant he might run into the arms of Lord Mountclere and
Ladywell.

'I shall be only too happy to stay till you are at leisure,' said Neigh,
in the unimpassioned delivery he used whether his meaning were a trite
compliment or the expression of his most earnest feeling.

'I may be rather a long time,' said Ethelberta dubiously.

'My time is yours.'

Ethelberta left the room and hurried to her aunt, exclaiming, 'O, Aunt
Charlotte, I hope you have rooms enough to spare for my visitors, for
they are like the fox, the goose, and the corn, in the riddle; I cannot
leave them together, and I can only be with one at a time. I want the
nicest drawing-room you have for an interview of a bare two minutes with
an old gentleman. I am so sorry this has happened, but it is not
altogether my fault! I only arranged to see one of them; but the other
was sent to me by mother, in a mistake, and the third met with me on my
journey: that's the explanation. There's the oldest of them just come.'

She looked through the glass partition, and under the arch of the court-
gate, as the wheels of the viscount's carriage were heard outside.
Ethelberta ascended to a room on the first floor, Lord Mountclere was
shown up, and the door closed upon them.

At this time Neigh was very comfortably lounging in an arm-chair in
Ethelberta's room on the second floor. This was a pleasant enough way of
passing the minutes with such a tender interview in prospect; and as he
leant he looked with languid and luxurious interest through the open
casement at the spars and rigging of some luggers on the Seine, the
pillars of the suspension bridge, and the scenery of the Faubourg St.
Sever on the other side of the river. How languid his interest might
ultimately have become there is no knowing; but there soon arose upon his
ear the accents of Ethelberta in low distinctness from somewhere outside
the room.

'Yes; the scene is pleasant to-day,' she said. 'I like a view over a
river.'

'I should think the steamboats are objectionable when they stop here,'
said another person.

Neigh's face closed in to an aspect of perplexity. 'Surely that cannot
be Lord Mountclere?' he muttered.

Had he been certain that Ethelberta was o