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If, at the opening of this harangue, the patience of Juliet nearly yielded to resentment, its length gave power to reflection,—which usually wants but time for checking impulse,—to point out the many and nameless mischiefs, to which quitting the house under similar suspicions might give rise. She quietly, therefore, answered, that though to herself it must precisely be the same thing, whether Mr. Ireton were at home or abroad, if that circumstance gave any choice to Mrs. Ireton, she would change her own plans, either to go or to stay, according to the directions which she might receive.
A superiority to accusation or surmize thus cool and decided, no sooner relieved the apprehensions of Mrs. Ireton by its evident innocence, than it excited her wrath by its deliberate indifference, if not contempt: and she would now disdainfully have rejected the attendance which, the moment before, she had anxiously desired, had not the little master of the house, who had seized the
