The urgency of finding security from immediate insult and want, induced her, nevertheless, to persevere in her fortitude for supporting, and her efforts for ameliorating her situation. But, the novelty over, all labour was vain, all success was at an end; and, in a very short time, she would have contributed no more to the expulsion of spleen, than any other inmate of the house; had not her superiour acquirements opened a more extensive field for the exercise of tyranny and caprice. And in that exercise alone, Juliet soon saw, consisted every sensation of pleasure of which Mrs Ireton was susceptible. Of the many new tasks of Juliet, that which she found the most severe, was inventing amusement for another while sad and dispirited herself. It was her duty to be always at hand, early or late; it was her business to furnish entertainment, whether sick or well. Success, therefore, was unacknowledged, though failure was resented. There was no relaxation to her toil, no rest for her person, no recruit for her spirits. From her sleep alone she could purloin the few minutes that she dedicated to her pen and her Gabriella. If a new novel excited interest, or a political pamphlet awakened curiosity, she was called upon to read whole hours, nay, whole days, without intermission; even a near extinction of voice did not authorize so great a liberty as that of requesting a few minutes for rest. Mrs Ireton, who regarded all the world as robust, compared with herself, deemed it an impertinent rivalry of a delicacy which she held to be unexampled, ever to pronounce the word fatigue, ever to heave a sigh of lassitude, or ever even to allude to that part of the human frame which is called nerves, unless with some pointed reference to herself. With the same despotic hardness, she ordered Juliet to the harp, or piano-forte, and made her play though she were suffering from the acutest head-ache; and sing when hoarse and short-breathed from the most violent cold. Yet those commands, however arbitrary and unfeeling, were more supportable than those with which, after every other source of tyrannic authority had been drained, the day was ordinarily concluded. Mrs Ireton, at the hour of retiring, when weary alike of books and of music, listless, fretful, captious; too sleepy for any exertion, yet too wakeful or uneasy for repose; constantly brought forward the same enquiries which had so often been urged and repelled, in the week that they had spent together upon their arrival from France; repeated the same sneers, revived the same suspicions, and recurred to the same rude interrogatories or offensive insinuations.