angement--I
am not quite sure if it holds good.'

'You don't wish me to see you safely in the train?'

'It is not necessary: thank you very much. We are well used to getting
about the world alone, and from Melchester to Knollsea is no serious
journey, late or early. . . . Yet I think I ought, in honesty, to tell
you that we are not entirely by ourselves in Melchester to-day.'

'I remember I saw your friend--relative--in the room at the Town-hall. It
did not occur to my mind for the moment that he was any other than a
stranger standing there.'

'He is not a relative,' she said, with perplexity. 'I hardly know,
Christopher, how to explain to you my position here to-day, because of
some difficulties that have arisen since we have been in the town, which
may alter it entirely. On that account I will be less frank with you
than I should like to be, considering how long we have known each other.
It would be wrong, however, if I were not to tell you that there has been
a possibility of my marriage with him.'

'The elderly gentleman?'

'Yes. And I came here in his company, intending to return with him. But
you shall know all soon. Picotee shall write to Faith.'

'I always think the Cathedral looks better from this point than from the
point usually chosen by artists,' he said, with nervous quickness,
directing her glance upwards to the silent structure, now misty and
unrelieved by either high light or deep shade. 'We get the grouping of
the chapels and choir-aisles more clearly shown--and the whole culminates
to a more perfect pyramid from this spot--do you think so?'

'Yes. I do.'

A little further, and Christopher stopped to enter, when Ethelberta bade
him farewell. 'I thought at one time that our futures might have been
different from what they are apparently becoming,' he said then,
regarding her as a stall-reader regards the brilliant book he cannot
afford to buy. 'But one gets weary of repining about that. I wish
Picotee and yourself could see us oftener; I am as confirmed a bachelor
now as Faith is an old maid. I wonder if--should the event you
contemplate occur--you and he will ever visit us, or we shall ever visit
you!'

Christopher was evidently imagining the elderly gentleman to be some
retired farmer, or professional man already so intermixed with the
metamorphic classes of society as not to be surprised or inconvenienced
by her beginnings; one who wished to secure Ethelberta as an ornament