Miss Arbe, though anxious to understand, before she uttered even a word, what sort of footing, independently of Mrs Maple, this young person was upon in the world, failed not to remark, in her silence, a courage that unavoidably spoke in her favour.
Ellis saw, but too plainly, how little she had to expect from spontaneous pity, or liberality; and hesitated whether to plead more humbly, or to relinquish at once her plan.
'You are still, then,' resumed Miss Bydel, 'at your secret-keeping, I find, that we were told so much about at the beginning, before the discovery of your being a lady of family and fashion; which came out so, all of the sudden, at last, that I should never have believed a word of it, but for knowing Mrs Maple to be so amazing particular as to those points.--'
'And Mrs Howel!' here interrupted Miss Arbe, casting at Ellis, upon the recollection of such a confirmation of her birth and connections, a look of so much favour, that, again hoping for her aid, Ellis begged to alight at Miss Matson's, the milliner.
Miss Arbe said that she would attend her thither with pleasure. 'And I, my dear,' said Miss Bydel, 'will go in with you, too; for I want a few odd matters for myself.'
Ellis, finding how little she was understood, was forced to add: 'It is not for any purchases that I go to Miss Matson;--it is to lodge in her house, till I can find some better asylum!--'
The first amazement of the two ladies sunk into nothing, when contrasted with that which they experienced at this moment. That she should acknowledge herself to be poor, was quite enough, be her other claims to notice what they might, to excite immediate contempt in Miss Bydel: while Miss Arbe, in that point, more liberal, but, in all that she conceived to belong to fashion, a very slave, was embarrassed how to treat her, till she could gain some information how she was likely to be treated by the world: but neither of them had entertained the most distant suspicion, that she was not settled under the roof, and the patronage, of Mrs Maple. To hear, therefore, of her seeking a lodging, and wanting an asylum, presented her in so new, so altered, and so humiliated a point of view, that Miss Bydel herself was not immediately able to speak; and the two ladies stared at each other, as if reciprocally demanding how to behave.