throughout, from which alone, after all, could the true
spirit and worth and seriousness of his words be apprehended.
Impecuniosity may revel in unqualified vows and brim over with
confessions as blithely as a bird of May, but such careless pleasures are
not for the solvent, whose very dreams are negotiable, and are expressed
with due care accordingly.

That Neigh had used the words she had far more than prima-facie
appearances for believing. Neigh's own conduct towards her, though
peculiar rather than devoted, found in these words alone a reasonable
key. But, supposing the estate to be such a verbal hallucination as, for
instance, hers had been at Arrowthorne, when her poor, unprogressive,
hopelessly impracticable Christopher came there to visit her, and was so
wonderfully undeceived about her social standing: what a fiasco, and what
a cuckoo-cry would his utterances about marriage seem then. Christopher
had often told her of his expectations from 'Arrowthorne Lodge,' and of
the blunders that had resulted in consequence. Had not Ethelberta's
affection for Christopher partaken less of lover's passion than of old-
established tutelary tenderness she might have been reminded by this
reflection of the transcendent fidelity he had shown under that trial--as
severe a trial, considering the abnormal, almost morbid, development of
the passion for position in present-day society, as can be prepared for
men who move in the ordinary, unheroic channels of life.

By the following evening the consideration of this possibility, that
Neigh's position might furnish scope for such a disillusive discovery by
herself as hers had afforded to Christopher, decoyed Ethelberta into a
curious little scheme. She was piqued into a practical undertaking by
the man who could say to his friend with such sangfroid, 'I mean to marry
that lady.'

Merely telling Picotee to prepare for an evening excursion, of which she
was to talk to no one, Ethelberta made ready likewise, and they left the
house in a cab about half-an-hour before sunset, and drove to the
Waterloo Station.

With the decline and departure of the sun a fog gathered itself out of
the low meadow-land that bordered the railway as they went along towards
the west, stretching over it like a placid lake, till at the end of the
journey, the mist became generally pervasive, though not dense. Avoiding
observation as much as they conveniently could, the two sisters walked
from the long wo