fore this picture sat Ethelberta in a light linen dress, and with
tightly-knotted hair--now again Berta Chickerel as of old--serving out
breakfast to the rest of the party, and sometimes lifting her eyes to the
outlook from the window, which presented a happy combination of grange
scenery with marine. Upon the irregular slope between the house and the
quay was an orchard of aged trees wherein every apple ripening on the
boughs presented its rubicund side towards the cottage, because that
building chanced to lie upwards in the same direction as the sun. Under
the trees were a few Cape sheep, and over them the stone chimneys of the
village below: outside these lay the tanned sails of a ketch or smack,
and the violet waters of the bay, seamed and creased by breezes
insufficient to raise waves; beyond all a curved wall of cliff,
terminating in a promontory, which was flanked by tall and shining
obelisks of chalk rising sheer from the trembling blue race beneath.

By one sitting in the room that commanded this prospect, a white
butterfly among the apple-trees might be mistaken for the sails of a
yacht far away on the sea; and in the evening when the light was dim,
what seemed like a fly crawling upon the window-pane would turn out to be
a boat in the bay.

When breakfast was over, Ethelberta sat leaning on the window-sill
considering her movements for the day. It was the time fixed for the
meeting of the Imperial Association at Corvsgate Castle, the celebrated
ruin five miles off, and the meeting had some fascinations for her. For
one thing, she had never been present at a gathering of the kind,
although what was left in any shape from the past was her constant
interest, because it recalled her to herself and fortified her mind.
Persons waging a harassing social fight are apt in the interest of the
combat to forget the smallness of the end in view; and the hints that
perishing historical remnants afforded her of the attenuating effects of
time even upon great struggles corrected the apparent scale of her own.
She was reminded that in a strife for such a ludicrously small object as
the entry of drawing-rooms, winning, equally with losing, is below the
zero of the true philosopher's concern.

There could never be a more excellent reason than this for going to view
the meagre stumps remaining from flourishing bygone centuries, and it had
weight with Ethelberta this very day; but it would be difficult to state
the whole co