hear it thunder as hear her sing!'

The policeman standing near was a humane man, through having a young
family he could hardly keep, and he hesitated about telling them to move
on. Christopher had before this time perceived that the articles were
laid down before an old gentleman who was seated in the shop, and that
the gentleman was none other than he who had been with Ethelberta in the
concert-room. The discovery was so startling that, constitutionally
indisposed as he was to stand and watch, he became as glued to the spot
as the other idlers. Finding himself now for the first time directly
confronting the preliminaries of Ethelberta's marriage to a stranger, he
was left with far less equanimity than he could have supposed possible to
the situation.

'So near the time!' he said, and looked hard at Lord Mountclere.

Christopher had now a far better opportunity than before for observing
Ethelberta's betrothed. Apart from any bias of jealousy, disappointment,
or mortification, he was led to judge that this was not quite the man to
make Ethelberta happy. He had fancied her companion to be a man under
fifty; he was now visibly sixty or more. And it was not the sort of
sexagenarianism beside which a young woman's happiness can sometimes
contrive to keep itself alive in a quiet sleepy way. Suddenly it
occurred to him that this was the man whom he had helped in the carriage
accident on the way to Knollsea. He looked again.

By no means undignified, the face presented that combination of slyness
and jocundity which we are accustomed to imagine of the canonical jolly-
dogs in mediaeval tales. The gamesome Curate of Meudon might have
supplied some parts of the countenance; cunning Friar Tuck the remainder.
Nothing but the viscount's constant habit of going to church every Sunday
morning when at his country residence kept unholiness out of his
features, for though he lived theologically enough on the Sabbath, as it
became a man in his position to do, he was strikingly mundane all the
rest of the week, always preferring the devil to God in his oaths. And
nothing but antecedent good-humour prevented the short fits of crossness
incident to his passing infirmities from becoming established. His look
was exceptionally jovial now, and the corners of his mouth twitched as
the telegraph-needles of a hundred little erotic messages from his heart
to his brain. Anybody could see that he was a merry man still, who loved
good