remark that she might attend--for Neigh took no more interest in
antiquities than in the back of the moon. Ethelberta was a little
flurried; perhaps he had come to scold her, or to treat her badly in that
indefinable way of his by which he could make a woman feel as nothing
without any direct act at all. She was afraid of him, and, determining
to shun him, was thankful that Lord Mountclere was near, to take off the
edge of Neigh's manner towards her if he approached.

'Do you know in what part of the ruins the lecture is to be given?' she
said to the viscount.

'Wherever you like,' he replied gallantly. 'Do you propose a place, and
I will get Dr. Yore to adopt it. Say, shall it be here, or where they
are standing?'

How could Ethelberta refrain from exercising a little power when it was
put into her hands in this way?

'Let it be here,' she said, 'if it makes no difference to the meeting.'

'It shall be,' said Lord Mountclere.

And then the lively old nobleman skipped like a roe to the President and
to Dr. Yore, who was to read the paper on the castle, and they soon
appeared coming back to where the viscount's party and Ethelberta were
beginning to seat themselves. The bulk of the company followed, and Dr.
Yore began.

He must have had a countenance of leather--as, indeed, from his colour he
appeared to have--to stand unmoved in his position, and read, and look up