gentlemen; and determined to make use of this opportunity for announcing her project of retreat. 'Pray, Ma'am,' Mrs Ireton cried, 'permit me to enquire—' her eye angrily, yet cautiously, glancing at Mr Giles, 'to what extraordinary circumstance I am indebted, for having the honour of receiving your visitors? Not that I am insensible to such a distinction; you won't imagine me such an Hottentot, I hope, as to be insensible to so honourable a distinction! Nevertheless, you'll pardon me, I trust, if I take the liberty to intimate, that, for the future, when any of your friends are to be indulged in waiting upon you, you will have the goodness to receive them in your own apartments. You'll excuse the hint, I flatter myself!' 'I shall intrude no apologies upon your time, Madam,' said Ellis, calmly, 'for relinquishing a situation in which I have acquitted myself so little to your satisfaction: to-morrow, therefore—'[Pg 583] [Pg 583] Anticipating, and eager to convert a resignation which she regarded as a disgrace, into a dismission which she considered as a triumph, Mrs Ireton impatiently interrupted her, crying, 'To-morrow? And why are we to wait for to-morrow? What has to-day done? Permit me to ask that. And pray don't take it ill. Pray don't let me offend you: only—what has poor to-day done, that to-morrow must have such a preference?' Juliet, frightened at the idea of being reduced to pass a night alone at an inn, now hesitated; and Mrs Ireton, smiling complacently around her, went on. 'Suffer me, I beg, to speak a little word for poor, neglected to-day! Have we not long enough been slaves to to-morrow? Let the pleasures of dear expectation be superseded, this once, for those of actual enjoyment. Not but 'twill be very severe upon me to lose you. I don't dissemble that. So gay a companion! I shall certainly expire an hypochondriac upon first missing your amusing sallies. I can never survive such a deprivation. No! It's all over with me! You pity me, I am sure, my good friends?' She now looked around, with an expression of ineffable satisfaction at her own wit: but it met no applause, save in the ever ready giggles of Selina, and the broad admiration of the round-eyed Miss Bydel. Juliet silently courtsied, with a gravity that implied a leave-taking, and, approaching the door, desired that Ireton would let her pass. Ireton,
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