were handsome and
dashing enough to satisfy a court chronicler. Ethelberta, in a dress
sloped about as high over the shoulder as would have drawn approval from
Reynolds, and expostulation from Lely, thawed and thawed each friend who
came near her, and sent him or her away smiling; yet she felt a little
surprise. She had seldom visited at a country-house, and knew little of
the ordinary composition of a group of visitors within its walls; but the
present assemblage seemed to want much of that old-fashioned stability
and quaint monumental dignity she had expected to find under this
historical roof. Nobody of her entertainer's own rank appeared. Not a
single clergyman was there. A tendency to talk Walpolean scandal about
foreign courts was particularly manifest. And although tropical
travellers, Indian officers and their wives, courteous exiles, and
descendants of Irish kings, were infinitely more pleasant than Lord
Mountclere's landed neighbours would probably have been, to such a
cosmopolite as Ethelberta a calm Tory or old Whig company would have
given a greater treat. They would have struck as gratefully upon her
senses as sylvan scenery after crags and cliffs, or silence after the
roar of a cataract.

It was evening, and all these personages at Enckworth Court were merry,
snug, and warm within its walls. Dinner-time had passed, and everything
had gone on well, when Mrs. Tara O'Fanagan, who had a gold-clamped tooth,
which shone every now and then, asked Ethelberta if she would amuse them
by telling a story, since nobody present, except Lord Mountclere, had
ever heard one from her lips.

Seeing that Ethelberta had been working at that art as a profession, it
can hardly be said that the question was conceived with tact, though it
was put with grace. Lord Mountclere evidently thought it objectionable,
for he looked unhappy. To only one person in the brilliant room did the
request appear as a timely accident, and that was to Ethelberta herself.
Her honesty was always making war upon her manoeuvres, and shattering
their delicate meshes, to her great inconvenience and delay. Thus there
arose those devious impulses and tangential flights which spoil the works
of every would-be schemer who instead of being wholly machine is half
heart. One of these now was to show herself as she really was, not only
to Lord Mountclere, but to his friends assembled, whom, in her ignorance,
she respected more than they deserved, an