one of your romances broken loose. There is no law for
impulse: that is why I am here.'

Thus fancifully they conversed till the interview concluded. Getting her
to promise that she would see him again, Ladywell retired to a sitting-
room on the same landing, in which he had been writing letters before she
came up. Immediately upon this her aunt, who began to suspect that
something peculiar was in the wind, came to tell her that Mr. Neigh had
been inquiring for her again.

'Send him in,' said Ethelberta.

Neigh's footsteps approached, and the well-known figure entered.
Ethelberta received him smilingly, for she was getting so used to awkward
juxtapositions that she treated them quite as a natural situation. She
merely hoped that Ladywell would not hear them talking through the
partition.

Neigh scarcely said anything as a beginning: she knew his errand
perfectly; and unaccountable as it was to her, the strange and
unceremonious relationship between them, that had originated in the
peculiar conditions of their first close meeting, was continued now as
usual.

'Have you been able to bestow a thought on the question between us? I
hope so,' said Neigh.

'It is no use,' said Ethelberta. 'Wait a month, and you will not require
an answer. You will not mind speaking low, because of a person in the
next room?'

'Not at all.--Why will that be?'

'I might say; but let us speak of something else.'

'I don't see how we can,' said Neigh brusquely. 'I had no other reason
on earth for calling here. I wished to get the matter settled, and I
could not be satisfied without seeing you. I hate writing on matters of
this sort. In fact I can't do it, and that's why I am here.'

He was still speaking when an attendant entered with a note.

'Will you excuse me one moment?' said Ethelberta, stepping to the window
and opening the missive. It contained these words only, in a scrawl so
full of deformities that she could hardly piece its meaning together:--

'I must see you again to-day unless you absolutely deny yourself to
me, which I shall take as a refusal to meet me any more. I will
arrive, punctually, five minutes after you receive this note. Do pray
be alone if you can, and eternally gratify,--Yours,

'MOUNTCLERE.'

'If anything has happened I shall be pleased to wait,' said Neigh, seeing
her concern when she had closed the note.

'O no, it is nothing,' said Ethelberta precipitately. 'Yet I thi