a moment; that having once proved attractive there
should be any falling-off until such time had elapsed as would enable her
to harvest some solid fruit was equally a surprise. Future expectations
are often based without hesitation upon one happy accident, when the only
similar condition remaining to subsequent sets of circumstances is that
the same person forms the centre of them. Her situation was so peculiar,
and so unlike that of most public people, that there was hardly an
argument explaining this triumphant opening which could be used in
forecasting the close; unless, indeed, more strategy were employed in the
conduct of the campaign than Ethelberta seemed to show at present.

There was no denying that she commanded less attention than at first: the
audience had lessened, and, judging by appearances, might soon be
expected to be decidedly thin. In excessive lowness of spirit,
Ethelberta translated these signs with the bias that a lingering echo of
her mother's dismal words naturally induced, reading them as conclusive
evidence that her adventure had been chimerical in its birth. Yet it was
very far less conclusive than she supposed. Public interest might
without doubt have been renewed after a due interval, some of the falling-
off being only an accident of the season. Her novelties had been hailed
with pleasure, the rather that their freshness tickled than that their
intrinsic merit was appreciated; and, like many inexperienced dispensers
of a unique charm, Ethelberta, by bestowing too liberally and too
frequently, was destroying the very element upon which its popularity
depended. Her entertainment had been good in its conception, and partly
good in its execution; yet her success had but little to do with that
goodness. Indeed, what might be called its badness in a histrionic
sense--that is, her look sometimes of being out of place, the sight of a
beautiful woman on a platform, revealing tender airs of domesticity which
showed her to belong by character to a quiet drawing-room--had been
primarily an attractive feature. But alas, custom was staling this by
improving her up to the mark of an utter impersonator, thereby
eradicating the pretty abashments of a poetess out of her sphere; and
more than one well-wisher who observed Ethelberta from afar feared that
it might some day come to be said of her that she had

'Enfeoffed herself to popularity:
That, being daily swallowed by men's eyes,
They su