'I am very glad to hear it, indeed! Very happy, upon my word! I was afraid you were going to faint away! But I find that you are only delicate; only fatigued by descending the stairs. I ought, indeed, to have sent somebody to help you; somebody you could have leant upon as you came along. I was very stupid not to think of that. I hope you'll pardon me?'
Juliet looked down, but kept her place.
Mrs Ireton, a little nettled, was silent a few minutes, and then said, 'Pray,—if I may ask,—if it will not be too great a liberty to ask,—what have been your pursuits since I had the honour of accompanying you to London? How have you passed your time? I hope you have found something to amuse you?'
Juliet sighed a negative.
'You have been studying the fine arts, I am told. Painting?—Drawing?—Sculpture?—or what is it?—Something of that sort, I am informed. Pray what is it, Mrs Thing-a-mi?—I am always forgetting your name. Yet you have certainly a name; but I don't know how it is, I can never remember it. I believe I must beg you to write it down.'
Juliet again only sighed.
'Perhaps I am making a mistake as to your occupations? Very likely I may be quite in the wrong? Indeed I think I recollect, now, what it is you have been doing. Acting?—That's it. Is it not? Pray what stage did you come out upon first? Did you begin wearing your itinerant buskins in England, or abroad?'
'Where I began, Madam, I have ended; at Mrs Maple's.'
'And pray, have you kept that same face ever since I saw you in Grosvenor Square? or have you put it on again only now, to come back to me? I rather suppose you have made it last the whole time. It would be very expensive, I apprehend, to change it frequently: it can by no means be so costly to keep it only in repair. How do you put on your colours? I have heard of somebody who had learnt the art of enamelling their own skin: is that your method?'
Waiting vainly for an answer, she went on.