knows
best.'

'I think so too,' said Gwendoline.

'And so do I,' said Cornelia. 'If I had once moved about in large
circles like Ethelberta, I wouldn't go down and be a schoolmistress--not
I.'

'I own it is foolish--suppose it is,' said Ethelberta wearily, and with a
readiness of misgiving that showed how recent and hasty was the scheme.
'Perhaps you are right, mother; anything rather than retreat. I wonder
if you are right! Well, I will think again of it to-night. Do not let
us speak more about it now.'

She did think of it that night, very long and painfully. The arguments
of her relatives seemed ponderous as opposed to her own inconsequent
longing for escape from galling trammels. If she had stood alone, the
sentiment that she had begun to build but was not able to finish, by
whomsoever it might have been entertained, would have had few terrors;
but that the opinion should be held by her nearest of kin, to cause them
pain for life, was a grievous thing. The more she thought of it, the
less easy seemed the justification of her desire for obscurity. From
regarding it as a high instinct she passed into a humour that gave that
desire the appearance of a whim. But could she really set in train
events, which, if not abortive, would take her to the altar with Viscount
Mountclere?

In one determination she never faltered; to commit her sin thoroughly if
she committed it at all. Her relatives believed her choice to lie
between Neigh and Ladywell alone. But once having decided to pass over
Christopher, whom she had loved, there could be no pausing for Ladywell
because she liked him, or for Neigh in that she was influenced by him.
They were both too near her level to be trusted to bear the shock of
receiving her from her father's hands. But it was possible that though
her genesis might tinge with vulgarity a commoner's household,
susceptible of such depreciation, it might show as a picturesque contrast
in the family circle of a peer. Hence it was just as well to go to the
end of her logic, where reasons for tergiversation would be most
pronounced. This thought of the viscount, however, was a secret for her
own breast alone.

Nearly the whole of that night she sat weighing--first, the question
itself of marrying Lord Mountclere; and, at other times, whether, for
safety, she might marry him without previously revealing family
particulars hitherto held necessary to be revealed--a piece of conduct
she had on