ed into the
party against his will by his over-hasty wife, arranged that Neigh should
go independently and meet them there at the hour named if he chose to do
so, to give him an opportunity of staying away. Ethelberta also was by
this time doubting if she had not been too eager with her proposal. To
go on such a sentimental errand might be thought by her friends to be
simply troublesome, their adherence having been given only in the regular
course of complaisance. She was still comparatively an outsider here,
her life with Lady Petherwin having been passed chiefly in alternations
between English watering-places and continental towns. However, it was
too late now to muse on this, and it may be added that from first to last
Ethelberta never discovered from the Belmaines whether her proposal had
been an infliction or a charm, so perfectly were they practised in
sustaining that complete divorce between thinking and saying which is the
hall-mark of high civilization.

But, however she might doubt the Belmaines, she had no doubt as to
Neigh's true sentiments: the time had come when he, notwithstanding his
air of being oppressed by almost every lively invention of town and
country for charming griefs to rest, would not be at all oppressed by a
quiet visit to the purlieus of St Giles's, Cripplegate, since she was the
originator, and was going herself.

It was a bright hope-inspiring afternoon in this mid-May time when the
carriage containing Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine, Mrs. Doncastle, and
Ethelberta, crept along the encumbered streets towards Barbican; till
turning out of that thoroughfare into Redcross Street they beheld the
bold shape of the old tower they sought, clothed in every neutral shade,
standing clear against the sky, dusky and grim in its upper stage, and
hoary grey below, where every corner of every stone was completely
rounded off by the waves of wind and storm.

All people were busy here: our visitors seemed to be the only idle
persons the city contained; and there was no dissonance--there never
is--between antiquity and such beehive industry; for pure industry, in
failing to observe its own existence and aspect, partakes of the
unobtrusive nature of material things. This intra-mural stir was a
flywheel transparent by excessive motion, through which Milton and his
day could be seen as if nothing intervened. Had there been ostensibly
harmonious accessories, a crowd of observing people in search of the
poetical