hics might
excuse her on the score of those curious pressures which had been brought
to bear upon her life, or whether it could excuse her at all, she had no
spirit to inquire. English society appeared a gloomy concretion enough
to abide in as she contemplated it on this journey home; yet, since its
gloominess was less an essential quality than an accident of her point of
view, that point of view she had determined to change.

There lay open to her two directions in which to move. She might annex
herself to the easy-going high by wedding an old nobleman, or she might
join for good and all the easy-going low, by plunging back to the level
of her family, giving up all her ambitions for them, settling as the wife
of a provincial music-master named Julian, with a little shop of fiddles
and flutes, a couple of old pianos, a few sheets of stale music pinned to
a string, and a narrow back parlour, wherein she would wait for the
phenomenon of a customer. And each of these divergent grooves had its
fascinations, till she reflected with regard to the first that, even
though she were a legal and indisputable Lady Mountclere, she might be
despised by my lord's circle, and left lone and lorn. The intermediate
path of accepting Neigh or Ladywell had no more attractions for her taste
than the fact of disappointing them had qualms for her conscience; and
how few these were may be inferred from her opinion, true or false, that
two words about the spigot on her escutcheon would sweep her lovers'
affections to the antipodes. She had now and then imagined that her
previous intermarriage with the Petherwin family might efface much
besides her surname, but experience proved that the having been wife for
a few weeks to a minor who died in his father's lifetime, did not weave
such a tissue of glory about her course as would resist a speedy undoing
by startling confessions on her station before her marriage, and her
environments now.

36. THE HOUSE IN TOWN

Returning by way of Knollsea, where she remained a week or two,
Ethelberta appeared one evening at the end of September before her house
in Exonbury Crescent, accompanied by a pair of cabs with the children and
luggage; but Picotee was left at Knollsea, for reasons which Ethelberta
explained when the family assembled in conclave. Her father was there,
and began telling her of a surprising change in Menlove--an unasked-for
concession to their cause, and a vow of secrecy which