All compliance with whatever she could wish, the Baronet promised to nail his eyes to the lowest picture in the room, should they be joined by any stragglers; and then, relinquishing all further examination, he begged permission to wait for his horses, in an apartment which is presided by a noble picture of Salvator Rosa; to which, never discouraged, he strove to call the attention of Juliet. Nothing could more aptly harmonize, not only with his enthusiastic eulogiums, but with his quaint fancy, than that exquisite effusion of the painter's imagination, 'where, surely,' said the rapturous Baronet, 'his pencil has been guided, if not impelled, in every stroke, by my dear little cronies the fairies! And that variety of vivifying objects; that rich, yet so elegant scenery, of airy gaiety, and ideal felicity, is palpably a representation of fairy land itself! Is it thither my dear little friends will, some day, convey me? And shall I be metamorphosed into one of those youthful swains, that are twining their garlands with such bewitching grace? And shall I myself elect the fair one, around whom I shall entwine mine?' This harangue was interrupted, by the appearance of a newly arrived party; but vainly Sir Jaspar kept his word, in reclining upon his crutches, till he was nearly prostrate upon the ground; he was immediately challenged by a lady; and that lady was Mrs Ireton. Juliet, inexpressibly shocked, hastily glided from the room, striving to cover her face with her luxuriously curling hair. She rambled about the mansion, till she met with a chambermaid, from whom she entreated permission to wait in some private apartment, till the carriage to which she belonged should be ready. The maid, obligingly, took her to a small room; and Juliet, taught by her cruel confusion at the sight of Mrs Ireton, the censure, if not slander, to which travelling alone with a man, however old, might make her liable; determined, at whatever hazard, to hang, henceforth, solely upon herself. She resolved, therefore, to beg the assistance of this maid-servant, to direct her to some safe rural lodging. But how great was her consternation, when, requiring, now, her purse, she suddenly missed,--what, in her late misery, she had neither guarded nor thought of, her packet and her work-bag! Every pecuniary resource was now sunk at a blow! even the deposit, which she had held as sacred, of Harleigh, was lost! At what period of her disturbances this misfortune had happened, she had no knowledge; nor whether her property had been dropt in her distress, or purloined; or simply left at the inn; the consequence, every way, was equally dreadful: and but for Sir Jaspar, whom all sense of propriety had told her, the moment before, to shun, yet to whom, now, she became tied, by absolute necessity, her Difficulties, at this conjuncture, would have been nearly distracting.