'What, Madam, am I now to do? 'Tis to your influence and exertions I am indebted for the attempt which I have made, to procure that self-dependance which I so earnestly covet. I shall always be most ready to acknowledge this obligation; but, permit me to solicit your directions, and, I hope, your aid, how I may try to allay the storm which accident has so cruelly raised around me; but which misconception alone can make dangerous or durable.' 'Very true, my dear Miss Ellis, if every body judged you as justly as I do; but when people have enemies--' 'Enemies?' repeated Ellis, amazed, 'surely, Madam, you are not serious?--Enemies? Can I possibly have any enemies? That, in a situation so little known, and so unlikely to be understood, I may have failed to create friends, I can easily, indeed, conceive,--but, offending no one, distressed, yet not importunate, and seeking to obviate my difficulties by my exertions; to supply my necessities by my labours,--surely I cannot have been so strangely, so unaccountably unfortunate as to have made myself any enemies?' 'Why you know, my dear Miss Ellis, how I blamed you, from the first, for that nonsense of telling Miss Brinville that she had no ear for music: what could it signify whether she had or not? She only wanted to learn that she might say she learnt; and you had no business to teach, but that you might be paid for teaching.' 'And is it possible, Madam, that I can have made her really my enemy, merely by forbearing to take what I thought would be a dishonourable advantage, of her ignorance of that defect?' 'Nay, she has certainly no great reason to be thankful, for she would never have found it out; and I am sure nobody else would ever have told it her! She is firmly persuaded that you only wanted to give Sir Lyell Sycamore an ill opinion of her accomplishments; for she declares that she has seen you unceasingly pursuing him, with all the wiles imaginable. One time she surprised you sitting entirely aloof, at the Welshman's benefit, till he joined you; another time, she caught you waiting for him in the aisle of the church; and, in short--' 'Miss Arbe,' cried Ellis, interrupting her, with undisguised resentment, 'if Miss Brinville can be amused by inventing, as well as propagating, premeditated motives for accidental occurrences, you must permit me to decline being the auditress, if I cannot escape being the object of such fictitious censure!'