company, warming drinks, nymph-like shapes, and pretty words, in
spite of the disagreeable suggestions he received from the pupils of his
eyes, and the joints of his lively limbs, that imps of mischief were busy
sapping and mining in those regions, with the view of tumbling him into a
certain cool cellar under the church aisle.

In general, if a lover can find any ground at all for serenity in the
tide of an elderly rival's success, he finds it in the fact itself of
that ancientness. The other side seems less a rival than a makeshift.
But Christopher no longer felt this, and the significant signs before his
eyes of the imminence of Ethelberta's union with this old hero filled him
with restless dread. True, the gentleman, as he appeared illuminated by
the jeweller's gas-jets, seemed more likely to injure Ethelberta by
indulgence than by severity, while her beauty lasted; but there was a
nameless something in him less tolerable than this.

The purchaser having completed his dealings with the goldsmith, was
conducted to the door by the master of the shop, and into the carriage,
which was at once driven off up the street.

Christopher now much desired to know the name of the man whom a nice
chain of circumstantial evidence taught him to regard as the happy winner
where scores had lost. He was grieved that Ethelberta's confessed
reserve should have extended so far as to limit her to mere indefinite
hints of marriage when they were talking almost on the brink of the
wedding-day. That the ceremony was to be a private one--which it
probably would be because of the disparity of ages--did not in his
opinion justify her secrecy. He had shown himself capable of a
transmutation as valuable as it is rare in men, the change from pestering
lover to staunch friend, and this was all he had got for it. But even an
old lover sunk to an indifferentist might have been tempted to spend an
unoccupied half-hour in discovering particulars now, and Christopher had
not lapsed nearly so far as to absolute unconcern.

That evening, however, nothing came in his way to enlighten him. But the
next day, when skirting the Close on his ordinary duties, he saw the same
carriage standing at a distance, and paused to behold the same old
gentleman come from a well-known office and re-enter the vehicle--Lord
Mountclere, in fact, in earnest pursuit of the business of yesternight,
having just pocketed a document in which romance, rashness, law, and
go