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"Why you know, my dear Miss Ellis, how I blamed you, from the first, for that nonsense of telling Miss Brinville that she had no ear for music: what could it signify whether she had or not? She only wanted to learn that she might say she learnt; and you had no business to teach, but that you might be paid for teaching."
"And is it possible, Madam, that I can have made her really my enemy, merely by forbearing to take what I thought would be a dishonourable advantage, of her ignorance of that defect?"
"Nay, she has certainly no great reason to be thankful, for she would never have found it out; and I am sure nobody else would ever have told it her! She is firmly persuaded that you only wanted to give Sir Lyell Sycamore an ill opinion of her accomplishments; for she declares that she has seen you unceasingly pursuing him, with all the wiles imaginable. One time she sur-
