as there is at Enckworth,
Picotee--quartos, folios, history, verse, Elzevirs, Caxtons--all that has
been done in literature from Moses down to Scott--with such companions I
can do without all other sorts of happiness.'

'And you will not go to town from Easter to Lammastide, as other noble
ladies do?' asked the younger girl, rather disappointed at this aspect of
a viscountess's life.

'I don't know.'

'But you will give dinners, and travel, and go to see his friends, and
have them to see you?'

'I don't know.'

'Will you not be, then, as any other peeress; and shall not I be as any
other peeress's sister?'

'That, too, I do not know. All is mystery. Nor do I even know that the
marriage will take place. I feel that it may not; and perhaps so much
the better, since the man is a stranger to me. I know nothing whatever
of his nature, and he knows nothing of mine.'

40. MELCHESTER (continued)

The commotion wrought in Julian's mind by the abrupt incursion of
Ethelberta into his quiet sphere was thorough and protracted. The
witchery of her presence he had grown strong enough to withstand in part;
but her composed announcement that she had intended to marry another,
and, as far as he could understand, was intending it still, added a new
chill to the old shade of disappointment which custom was day by day
enabling him to endure. During the whole interval in which he had
produced those diapason blasts, heard with such inharmonious feelings by
the three auditors outside the screen, his thoughts had wandered wider
than his notes in conjectures on the character and position of the
gentleman seen in Ethelberta's company. Owing to his assumption that
Lord Mountclere was but a stranger who had accidentally come in at the
side door, Christopher had barely cast a glance upon him, and the wide
difference between the years of the viscount and those of his betrothed
was not so particularly observed as to raise that point to an item in his
objections now. Lord Mountclere was dressed with all the cunning that
could be drawn from the metropolis by money and reiterated
dissatisfaction; he prided himself on his upright carriage; his stick was
so thin that the most malevolent could not insinuate that it was of any
possible use in walking; his teeth had put on all the vigour and
freshness of a second spring. Hence his look was the slowest of possible
clocks in respect of his age, and his manner was equally as much in t