But the woman of genius, a compound of glorious imagination and shrewd calculation, of truth of heart and some worldly-mindedness, was not so sure of her share of the bargain. Let it be remembered that these days were before Mrs. Siddons’s great success, rather after her sore defeat, when she had been driven from the London boards in artistic disgrace, and was drudging unremittingly to retrieve her mistake and maintain her little family by playing at provincial theatres and in country towns. Mrs. Siddons found that any pursuit (having overleapt such towns as Thorpe, to grope wildly for Lady Bell in London) which Miss Barlowe’s flight might have occasioned, was not likely to reach the fugitive, while the self-constituted guardian did not see, or seeing, could not understand the guarded advertisements in the newspapers. Mrs. Siddons began to think her young companion a serious source of responsibility, for which there was not sufficient recompense in Lady Bell’s conscious assistance in dress, and unconscious lessons in style. And this in spite of what happened one day, when Lady Bell being present as Mrs. Siddons was trying on a crown of pasteboard and goldbeater’s leaf, to wear in the character of Roxalana, the girl startled the actress by objecting inadvertently, “the Queen wore a coronet at her birthday, not a high-peaked thing like that.” It is true that as Mrs. Siddons, when she was not on the stage, held herself aloof from her theatrical companions, and was the most domestic of public women, she could keep “a genteel, modest young female” in her household from many doubtful and dangerous associations. But, since this young lady had no view of going on the stage, Mrs. Siddons judged rightly that, in the interests of all parties, there was no reason why Miss Barlowe should continue to undergo any exposure to the evils attendant on a theatrical connection. The supervision necessary to ward off such evils became irksome when prolonged, and the game was not worth the candle. The scruples were brought to a crisis by an accident. Lady Bell had foolishly carried her note-book in her pocket, and got the pocket picked when she was returning one night from the representation of _Venice Preserved_, believing that she was walking and talking with Venetian and princely conspirators in halls painted by Bellini and Titian, instead of among the rabble of a little bill-stuck lane in an English country town. Mrs. Siddons did not relish this proof of the power of her art; she looked a little indignant and disgusted. It might be her note-book which Miss Barlowe would lose next, only Mrs. Siddons always kept that safe in her own pocket or her husband’s.