In the meantime, Lady Juliana seeing that Ellen continued standing, said--"Sit down, child, and don't be frightened." Ellen gladly obeyed, for she could not help feeling a little agitated by Lady Juliana's strange mode of visiting.
The old lady looked round the room, and after a moment's pause, said--"Why, you are an unfashionable young woman, I see; work, books, maps, and the furniture remaining nearly as it was seven years ago! What, has nobody told you, child, the whole house ought to be new furnished?"
"Indeed, Ma'am, if they had, I should have paid no attention to them," said Ellen. "I must, indeed, be a strange ungrateful creature, if the magnificent furniture of this house was not more than equal to my wishes."
"So much the better, I am glad of it," returned Lady Juliana.--"Do you know me?" she added, turning in her usual abrupt manner to Ellen.
"Oh, I suppose you told St. Aubyn you had met with a cross, disagreeable old woman at Lady Meredith's, and he told you it must have been his aunt, Lady Juliana Mordaunt."
"Indeed, Madam," said Ellen, blushing a little at a statement so near the truth.
"Nay, don't tell lies, child," bluntly replied the old lady. "I hate flattery; besides, your countenance won't let you. I know what I am, which is more than every body can say. And do you generally spend your mornings in this manner?"
"Generally, unless my Lord wishes me to go any where with him."
"Lord St. Aubyn, Miss Cecil, and myself, sit together: we net or work, while he reads to us, unless Miss Cecil is sufficiently in spirits to give us some music."
"And have you no idea, child, how ridiculous the fashionable people think all this?"
"But will you persist in the same plan?" Ellen smiled.
"And do you mean to go on in this way all the time you are in town?"
"Not exactly perhaps. I am to see a little more of the public places; but my Lord wished me to wait till----"
"Till what? You may as well tell me, for I see you have an old-fashioned way of speaking your thoughts."
"It is true, your Ladyship sees in me one so little accustomed to the habits of the great world, that I have not yet learned to dissemble: will you permit me to say, and not be displeased, that Lord St. Aubyn anxiously wished to procure a chaperon, whose sanction should be unexceptionable--in short, Lady Juliana Mordaunt."