her, much as he
desired the contact, was literally ashamed to let her see and feel his
own, trembling with unmanageable excess of feeling. It was always so,
always had been so, always would be so, at these meetings of theirs: she
was immeasurably the strongest; and the deep-eyed young man fancied, in
the chagrin which the perception of this difference always bred in him,
that she triumphed in her superior control. Yet it was only in little
things that their sexes were thus reversed: Christopher would receive
quite a shock if a little dog barked at his heels, and be totally unmoved
when in danger of his life.

Certainly the most self-possessed woman in the world, under pressure of
the incongruity between their last meeting and the present one, might
have shown more embarrassment than Ethelberta showed on greeting him to-
day. Christopher was only a man in believing that the shyness which she
did evince was chiefly the result of personal interest. She might or
might not have been said to blush--perhaps the stealthy change upon her
face was too slow an operation to deserve that name: but, though pale
when he called, the end of ten minutes saw her colour high and wide. She
soon set him at his ease, and seemed to relax a long-sustained tension as
she talked to him of her arrangements, hopes, and fears.

'And how do you like London society?' said Ethelberta.

'Pretty well, as far as I have seen it: to the surface of its front
door.'

'You will find nothing to be alarmed at if you get inside.'

'O no--of course not--except my own shortcomings,' said the modest
musician. 'London society is made up of much more refined people than
society anywhere else.'

'That's a very prevalent opinion; and it is nowhere half so prevalent as
in London society itself. However, come and see my house--unless you
think it a trouble to look over a house?'

'No; I should like it very much.'

The decorations tended towards the artistic gymnastics prevalent in some
quarters at the present day. Upon a general flat tint of duck's-egg
green appeared quaint patterns of conventional foliage, and birds, done
in bright auburn, several shades nearer to redbreast-red than was
Ethelberta's hair, which was thus thrust further towards brown by such
juxtaposition--a possible reason for the choice of tint. Upon the glazed
tiles within the chimney-piece were the forms of owls, bats, snakes,
frogs, mice, spiders in their webs, moles, and other objec