Ethelberta did not give her mind to this remark; but, drawing a long breath, said, with a pouting laugh, which presaged unreality, 'The idea of his getting indifferent now! I have been intending to keep him on until I got tired of his attentions, and then put an end to them by marrying him; but here is he, before he has hardly declared himself, forgetting my existence as much as if he had vowed to love and cherish me for life. 'Tis an unnatural inversion of the manners of society.' 'When did you first get to care for him, dear Berta?' 'O--when I had seen him once or twice.' 'Goodness--how quick you were!' 'Yes--if I am in the mind for loving I am not to be hindered by shortness of acquaintanceship.' 'Nor I neither!' sighed Picotee. 'Nor any other woman. We don't need to know a man well in order to love him. That's only necessary when we want to leave off.' 'O Berta--you don't believe that!' 'If a woman did not invariably form an opinion of her choice before she has half seen him, and love him before she has half formed an opinion, there would be no tears and pining in the whole feminine world, and poets would starve for want of a topic. I don't believe it, do you say? Ah, well, we shall see.' Picotee did not know what to say to this; and Ethelberta left the room to see about her duties as public story-teller, in which capacity she had undertaken to appear again this very evening. 20. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE HALL--THE ROAD HOME London was illuminated by the broad full moon. The pavements looked white as if mantled with snow; ordinary houses were sublimated to the rank of public buildings, public buildings to palaces, and the faces of women walking the streets to those of calendared saints and guardian-angels, by the pure bleaching light from the sky.