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
to give explanations, without a change of muscle, under the dozens of
bright eyes that were there converged upon him, like the sticks of a fan,
from the ladies who sat round him in a semicircle upon the grass.
However, he went on calmly, and the women sheltered themselves from the
heat with their umbrellas and sunshades, their ears lulled by the hum of
insects, and by the drone of the doctor's voice. The reader buzzed on
with the history of the castle, tracing its development from a mound with
a few earthworks to its condition in Norman times; he related monkish
marvels connected with the spot; its resistance under Matilda to Stephen,
its probable shape while a residence of King John, and the sad story of
the Damsel of Brittany, sister of his victim Arthur, who was confined
here in company with the two daughters of Alexander, king of Scotland. He
went on to recount the confinement of Edward II. herein, previous to his
murder at Berkeley, the gay doings in the reign of Elizabeth, and so
downward through time to the final overthrow of the stern old pile. As
he proceeded, the lecturer pointed with his finger at the various
features appertaining to the date of his story, which he told with
splendid vigour when he had warmed to his work, till his narrative,
particularly in the conjectural and romantic parts, where it became
coloured rather by the speaker's imagination than by the pigments of
history, gathered together the wandering thoughts of all. It was easy
for him then to meet those fair concentred eyes, when the sunshades were
thr