“Yes, if it is a very good one.”

“Hamlet now?”

“Ah! we don’t speak of Shakspere’s plays as stories.  His characters are so real to us, that, in thinking of their development, we go back even to their fathers and mothers —­ and sometimes even speculate about their future.”

“You islanders are always in earnest somehow.  So are we Germans.  We are all one.”

“I hope you can be in earnest about dinner, then, for I hear the bell.”

“We must render ourselves in the drawing-room, then?  Yes.”

When they entered the drawing-room, they found Miss Cameron alone.  Funkelstein advanced, and addressed a few words to her in German, which Hugh’s limited acquaintance with the language prevented him from catching.  At the same moment, Mr. Arnold entered, and Funkelstein, turning to him immediately, proceeded, as if by way of apology for speaking in an unknown tongue, to interpret for Mr. Arnold’s benefit: 

“I have just been telling Miss Cameron in the language of my country, how much better she looks than when I saw her at Sir Edward Lastons.”

“I know I was quite a scare-crow then,” said Euphra, attempting to laugh.

“And now you are quite a decoy-duck, eh, Euphra?” said Mr. Arnold, laughing in reality at his own joke, which put him in great good-humour for the whole time of dinner and dessert.

“Thank you, uncle,” said Euphra, with a prettily pretended affectation of humility.  Then she added gaily: 

“When did you rise on our Sussex horizon, Herr von Funkelstein?”

“Oh!  I have been in the neighbourhood for a few days; but I owe my meeting with you to one of those coincidences which, were they not so pleasant —­ to me in this case, at least —­ one would think could only result from the blundering of old Dame Nature over her knitting.  If I had not had the good fortune to meet Mr. Sutherland the other evening, I should have remained in utter ignorance of your neighbourhood and my own felicity, Miss Cameron.  Indeed, I called now to see him, not you.”

Hugh saw Mr. Arnold looking rather doubtful of the foreigner’s fine speeches.

Dinner was announced.  Funkelstein took Miss Cameron, Hugh Mrs. Elton, and Mr. Arnold followed with Lady Emily, who would never precede her older friend.  Hugh tried to talk to Mrs. Elton, but with meagre success.  He was suddenly a nobody, and felt more than he had felt for a long time what, in his present deteriorated moral state, he considered the degradation of his position.  A gulf seemed to have suddenly yawned between himself and Euphra, and the loudest voice of his despairing agony could not reach across that gulf.  An awful conviction awoke within him, that the woman he worshipped would scarcely receive his worship at the worth of incense now; and yet in spirit he fell down grovelling before his idol.  The words “euphrasy and rue” kept ringing in his brain, coming over and over with