There was no denying that she commanded less attention than at first:  the audience had lessened, and, judging by appearances, might soon be expected to be decidedly thin.  In excessive lowness of spirit, Ethelberta translated these signs with the bias that a lingering echo of her mother’s dismal words naturally induced, reading them as conclusive evidence that her adventure had been chimerical in its birth.  Yet it was very far less conclusive than she supposed.  Public interest might without doubt have been renewed after a due interval, some of the falling-off being only an accident of the season.  Her novelties had been hailed with pleasure, the rather that their freshness tickled than that their intrinsic merit was appreciated; and, like many inexperienced dispensers of a unique charm, Ethelberta, by bestowing too liberally and too frequently, was destroying the very element upon which its popularity depended.  Her entertainment had been good in its conception, and partly good in its execution; yet her success had but little to do with that goodness.  Indeed, what might be called its badness in a histrionic sense—­that is, her look sometimes of being out of place, the sight of a beautiful woman on a platform, revealing tender airs of domesticity which showed her to belong by character to a quiet drawing-room—­had been primarily an attractive feature.  But alas, custom was staling this by improving her up to the mark of an utter impersonator, thereby eradicating the pretty abashments of a poetess out of her sphere; and more than one well-wisher who observed Ethelberta from afar feared that it might some day come to be said of her that she had

   ’Enfeoffed herself to popularity: 
   That, being daily swallowed by men’s eyes,
   They surfeited with honey, and began
   To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little
   More than a little is by much too much.’

But this in its extremity was not quite yet.

We discover her one day, a little after this time, sitting before a table strewed with accounts and bills from different tradesmen of the neighbourhood, which she examined with a pale face, collecting their totals on a blank sheet.  Picotee came into the room, but Ethelberta took no notice whatever of her.  The younger sister, who subsisted on scraps of notice and favour, like a dependent animal, even if these were only an occasional glance of the eye, could not help saying at last, ’Berta, how silent you are.  I don’t think you know I am in the room.’

‘I did not observe you,’ said Ethelberta.  ’I am very much engaged:  these bills have to be paid.’

‘What, and cannot we pay them?’ said Picotee, in vague alarm.

’O yes, I can pay them.  The question is, how long shall I be able to do it?’

’That is sad; and we are going on so nicely, too.  It is not true that you have really decided to leave off story-telling now the people don’t crowd to hear it as they did?’