rfeited 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?'

'I think I shall leave off.'

'And begin again next year?'

'That is very doubtful.'

'I'll tell you what you might do,' said Picotee, her face kindling with a
sense of great originality. 'You might travel about to country towns and
tell your story splendidly.'

'A man in my position might perhaps do it with impunity; but I could not
without losing ground in other domains. A woman may drive to Mayfair
from her house in Exonbury Crescent, and speak from a platform there, and
be supposed to do it as an original way of amusing herself; but when it
comes to starring in the provinces she establishes herself as a woman of
a different breed and habit. I wish I were a man! I would give up this
house, advertise it to be let furnished, and sally forth with confidence.
But I am driven to think of other ways to manage than that.'

Picotee fell into a conjectural look, but could not guess.

'The way of marriage,' said Ethelberta. 'Otherwise perhaps the poetess
may live to become what Dryden called himself when he got old and poor--a
rent-charge on Providence. . . . . Yes, I must try that way,' she
continued, with a sarcasm towards people out of hearing. I must buy a
"Peerage" for one thing, and a "Baronetage," and a "House of Commons,"
and a "Landed Gentry," and learn what people a