The Hand of Ethelberta | Page 5

a slight depression in the ground. It was as
yet too early in the evening to be afraid, but it was too late to be
altogether courageous; and with balanced sensations Ethelberta kept

her eye sharply upon him as he rose by degrees into view. The peculiar
arrangement of his hat and pugree soon struck her as being that she had
casually noticed on a peg in one of the rooms of the 'Red Lion,' and
when he came close she saw that his arms diminished to a peculiar
smallness at their junction with his shoulders, like those of a doll,
which was explained by their being girt round at that point with the
straps of a knapsack that he carried behind him. Encouraged by the
probability that he, like herself, was staying or had been staying at the
'Red Lion,' she said, 'Can you tell me if this is the way back to
Anglebury?'
'It is one way; but the nearest is in this direction,' said the tourist--the
same who had been criticized by the two old men.
At hearing him speak all the delicate activities in the young lady's
person stood still: she stopped like a clock. When she could again fence
with the perception which had caused all this, she breathed.
'Mr. Julian!' she exclaimed. The words were uttered in a way which
would have told anybody in a moment that here lay something
connected with the light of other days.
'Ah, Mrs. Petherwin!--Yes, I am Mr. Julian--though that can matter
very little, I should think, after all these years, and what has passed.'
No remark was returned to this rugged reply, and he continued
unconcernedly, 'Shall I put you in the path--it is just here?'
'If you please.'
'Come with me, then.'
She walked in silence at his heels, not a word passing between them all
the way: the only noises which came from the two were the brushing of
her dress and his gaiters against the heather, or the smart rap of a stray
flint against his boot.
They had now reached a little knoll, and he turned abruptly: 'That is

Anglebury--just where you see those lights. The path down there is the
one you must follow; it leads round the hill yonder and directly into the
town.'
'Thank you,' she murmured, and found that he had never removed his
eyes from her since speaking, keeping them fixed with mathematical
exactness upon one point in her face. She moved a little to go on her
way; he moved a little less--to go on his.
'Good-night,' said Mr. Julian.
The moment, upon the very face of it, was critical; and yet it was one of
those which have to wait for a future before they acquire a definite
character as good or bad.
Thus much would have been obvious to any outsider; it may have been
doubly so to Ethelberta, for she gave back more than she had got,
replying, 'Good-bye--if you are going to say no more.'
Then in struck Mr. Julian: 'What can I say? You are nothing to me. . . .
I could forgive a woman doing anything for spite, except marrying for
spite.'
'The connection of that with our present meeting does not appear,
unless it refers to what you have done. It does not refer to me.'
'I am not married: you are.'
She did not contradict him, as she might have done. 'Christopher,' she
said at last, 'this is how it is: you knew too much of me to respect me,
and too little to pity me. A half knowledge of another's life mostly does
injustice to the life half known.'
'Then since circumstances forbid my knowing you more, I must do my
best to know you less, and elevate my opinion of your nature by
forgetting what it consists in,' he said in a voice from which all feeling
was polished away.

'If I did not know that bitterness had more to do with those words than
judgment, I--should be--bitter too! You never knew half about me; you
only knew me as a governess; you little think what my beginnings
were.'
'I have guessed. I have many times told myself that your early life was
superior to your position when I first met you. I think I may say
without presumption that I recognize a lady by birth when I see her,
even under reverses of an extreme kind. And certainly there is this to be
said, that the fact of having been bred in a wealthy home does slightly
redeem an attempt to attain to such a one again.'
Ethelberta smiled a smile of many meanings.
'However, we are wasting words,' he resumed cheerfully. 'It is better for
us to part as we met, and continue to be the strangers