ry, for Picotee's words would dry away like
a brook in the sands when she held conversation with Christopher.

As they had anticipated, the sufferer was no other than their intending
visitor. Next morning there was a note explaining the accident, and
expressing its writer's suffering from the cruel delay as greater than
that from the swollen ankle, which was progressing favourably.

Nothing further was heard of Lord Mountclere for more than a week, when
she received another letter, which put an end to her season of
relaxation, and once more braced her to the contest. This epistle was
very courteously written, and in point of correctness, propriety, and
gravity, might have come from the quill of a bishop. Herein the old
nobleman gave a further description of the accident, but the main
business of the communication was to ask her if, since he was not as yet
very active, she would come to Enckworth Court and delight himself and a
small group of friends who were visiting there.

She pondered over the letter as she walked by the shore that day, and
after some hesitation decided to go.

38. ENCKWORTH COURT

It was on a dull, stagnant, noiseless afternoon of autumn that Ethelberta
first crossed the threshold of Enckworth Court. The daylight was so
lowered by the impervious roof of cloud overhead that it scarcely reached
further into Lord Mountclere's entrance-hall than to the splays of the
windows, even but an hour or two after midday; and indoors the glitter of
the fire reflected itself from the very panes, so inconsiderable were the
opposing rays.

Enckworth Court, in its main part, had not been standing more than a
hundred years. At that date the weakened portions of the original
mediaeval structure were pulled down and cleared away, old jambs being
carried off for rick-staddles, and the foliated timbers of the hall roof
making themselves useful as fancy chairs in the summer-houses of rising
inns. A new block of masonry was built up from the ground of such height
and lordliness that the remnant of the old pile left standing became as a
mere cup-bearer and culinary menial beside it. The rooms in this old
fragment, which had in times past been considered sufficiently dignified
for dining-hall, withdrawing-room, and so on, were now reckoned barely
high enough for sculleries, servants' hall, and laundries, the whole of
which were arranged therein.

The modern portion had been planned with such a total disr