‘We must all scatter again!’

’If we could get as we were once, I wouldn’t mind that.  But we shall have lost our character as simple country folk who know nothing, which are the only class of poor people that squires will give any help to; and I much doubt if the girls would get places after such a discovery—­it would be so awkward and unheard-of.’

‘Well, all I can say is,’ replied Ethelberta, ’that I will do my best.  All that I have is theirs and yours as much as mine, and these arrangements are simply on their account.  I don’t like my relations being my servants; but if they did not work for me, they would have to work for others, and my service is much lighter and pleasanter than any other lady’s would be for them, so the advantages are worth the risk.  If I stood alone, I would go and hide my head in any hole, and care no more about the world and its ways.  I wish I was well out of it, and at the bottom of a quiet grave—­anybody might have the world for me then!  But don’t let me disturb you longer; it is getting late.’

Ethelberta then wished her mother good-night, and went away.  To attempt confidences on such an ethereal matter as love was now absurd; her hermit spirit was doomed to dwell apart as usual; and she applied herself to deep thinking without aid and alone.  Not only was there Picotee’s misery to disperse; it became imperative to consider how best to overpass a more general catastrophe.

24.  Ethelberta’s house (continued)—­the British museum

Mrs. Chickerel, in deploring the risks of their present speculative mode of life, was far from imagining that signs of the foul future so much dreaded were actually apparent to Ethelberta at the time the lament was spoken.  Hence the daughter’s uncommon sensitiveness to prophecy.  It was as if a dead-reckoner poring over his chart should predict breakers ahead to one who already beheld them.

That her story-telling would prove so attractive Ethelberta had not ventured to expect for a moment; that having once proved attractive there should be any falling-off until such time had elapsed as would enable her to harvest some solid fruit was equally a surprise.  Future expectations are often based without hesitation upon one happy accident, when the only similar condition remaining to subsequent sets of circumstances is that the same person forms the centre of them.  Her situation was so peculiar, and so unlike that of most public people, that there was hardly an argument explaining this triumphant opening which could be used in forecasting the close; unless, indeed, more strategy were employed in the conduct of the campaign than Ethelberta seemed to show at present.