In my dress was
a pocket; she fairly turned it inside out: she counted the money in my
purse; she opened a little memorandum-book, coolly perused its
contents, and took from between the leaves a small plaited lock of Miss
Marchmont's grey hair. To a bunch of three keys, being those of my
trunk, desk, and work-box, she accorded special attention: with these,
indeed, she withdrew a moment to her own room. I softly rose in my bed
and followed her with my eye: these keys, reader, were not brought back
till they had left on the toilet of the adjoining room the impress of
their wards in wax. All being thus done decently and in order, my
property was returned to its place, my clothes were carefully refolded.
Of what nature were the conclusions deduced from this scrutiny? Were
they favourable or otherwise? Vain question. Madame's face of stone
(for of stone in its present night aspect it looked: it had been human,
and, as I said before, motherly, in the salon) betrayed no response.

Her duty done--I felt that in her eyes this business was a duty--she
rose, noiseless as a shadow: she moved towards her own chamber; at the
door, she turned, fixing her eye on the heroine of the bottle, who
still slept and loudly snored. Mrs. Svini (I presume this was Mrs.
Svini, Anglice or Hibernice, Sweeny)--Mrs. Sweeny's doom was in Madame
Beck's eye--an immutable purpose that eye spoke: Madame's visitations
for shortcomings might be slow, but they were sure. All this was very
un-English: truly I was in a foreign land.

The morrow made me further acquainted with Mrs. Sweeny. It seems she
had introduced herself to her present employer as an English lady in
reduced circumstances: a native, indeed, of Middlesex, professing to
speak the English tongue with the purest metropolitan accent.
Madame--reliant on her own infallible expedients for finding out the
truth in time--had a singular intrepidity in hiring service off-hand
(as indeed seemed abundantly proved in my own case). She received Mrs.
Sweeny as nursery-governess to her three children. I need hardly
explain to the reader that this lady was in effect a native of Ireland;
her station I do not pretend to fix: she boldly declared that she had
"had the bringing-up of the son and daughter of a marquis." I think
myself, she might possibly have been a hanger-on, nurse, fosterer, or
washerwoman, in some Irish family: she spoke a smothered tongue,
curiously overlaid with mincing cockney inflections. By