arrived there some time earlier, had gone straight to
her aunt, whom she found sitting behind a large ledger in the office,
making up the accounts with her husband, a well-framed reflective man
with a grey beard. M. Moulin bustled, waited for her remarks and
replies, and made much of her in a general way, when Ethelberta said,
what she had wanted to say instantly, 'Has a gentleman called Mr. Neigh
been here?'

'O yes--I think it is Neigh--there's a card upstairs,' replied her aunt.
'I told him you were alone at the cathedral, and I believe he walked that
way. Besides that one, another has come for you--a Mr. Ladywell, and he
is waiting.'

'Not for me?'

'Yes, indeed. I thought he seemed so anxious, under a sort of assumed
calmness, that I recommended him to remain till you came in.'

'Goodness, aunt; why did you?' Ethelberta said, and thought how much her
mother's sister resembled her mother in doings of that sort.

'I thought he had some good reason for seeing you. Are these men
intruders, then?'

'O no--a woman who attempts a public career must expect to be treated as
public property: what would be an intrusion on a domiciled gentlewoman is
a tribute to me. You cannot have celebrity and sex-privilege both.' Thus
Ethelberta laughed off the awkward conjuncture, inwardly deploring the
unconscionable maternal meddling which had led to this, though not
resentfully, for she had too much staunchness of heart to decry a
parent's misdirected zeal. Had the clanship feeling been universally as
strong as in the Chickerel family, the fable of the well-bonded fagot
might have remained unwritten.

Ladywell had sent her a letter about getting his picture of herself
engraved for an illustrated paper, and she had not replied, considering
that she had nothing to do with the matter, her form and feature having
been given in the painting as no portrait at all, but as those of an
ideal. To see him now would be vexatious; and yet it was chilly and
formal to an ungenerous degree to keep aloof from him, sitting lonely in
the same house. 'A few weeks hence,' she thought, 'when Menlove's
disclosures make me ridiculous, he may slight me as a lackey's girl, an
upstart, an adventuress, and hardly return my bow in the street. Then I
may wish I had given him no personal cause for additional bitterness.'
So, putting off the fine lady, Ethelberta thought she would see Ladywell
at once.

Ladywell was unaffectedly glad to meet her;