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 "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—"

Anticipating, and eager to convert a resignation which she regarded as a disgrace, into a dismission which she