I was left weeping behind the chair where lady Harriot had sate, and, as I thought, quite alone.  A something had before twitched my frock two or three times, so slightly I had scarcely noticed it; a little head now peeped round, and looking up in my face said, “She is not miss Lesley:”  it was the young Augustus; he had been sitting at my feet, but I had not observed him.  He then started up, and taking hold of my hand with one of his, with the other holding fast by my clothes, he led, or rather dragged me, into the midst of the company assembled in the drawing-room.  The vehemence of his manner, his little face as red as fire, caught every eye.  The ladies smiled, and one gentleman laughed in a most unfeeling manner.  His elder brother patted him on the head, and said, “You are a humane little fellow.  Elizabeth, we might have thought of this.”

Very kind words were now spoken to me by sir Edward, and he called me Harriot, precious name now grown to me.  Lady Harriot kissed me, and said she would never forget how long she had loved me as her child.  These were comfortable words; but I heard echoed round the room, “Poor thing, she cannot help it.—­I am sure she is to be pitied.—­Dear lady Harriot, how kind, how considerate you are!” Ah! what a deep sense of my altered condition did I then feel!

“Let the young ladies divert themselves in another room,” said sir Edward; “and, Harriot, take your new sister with you, and help her to entertain your friends.”  Yes, he called me Harriot again, and afterwards invented new names for his daughter and me, and always called us by them, apparently in jest; yet I knew it was only because he would not hurt me with hearing our names reversed.  When sir Edward desired us to shew the children into another room, Ann and I walked towards the door.  A new sense of humiliation arose—­how could I go out at the door before miss Lesley?—­I stood irresolute; she drew back.  The elder brother of my friend Augustus assisted me in this perplexity; pushing us all forward, as if in a playful mood, he drove us indiscriminately before him, saying, “I will make one among you to-day.”  He had never joined in our sports before.

My luckless Play, that sad instance of my duplicity, was never once mentioned to me afterwards, not even by any one of the children who had acted in it, and I must also tell you how considerate an old lady was at the time about our dresses.  As soon as she perceived things growing very serious, she hastily stripped off the upper garments we wore to represent our different characters.  I think I should have died with shame, if the child had led me into the drawing-room in the mummery I had worn to represent a nurse.  This good lady was of another essential service to me; for perceiving an irresolution in every one how they should behave to us, which distressed me very much, she contrived to place miss Lesley above me at table, and called her miss Lesley, and me miss Withers; saying at the same time in a low voice, but as if she meant I should hear her, “It is better these things should be done at once, then they are over.”  My heart thanked her, for I felt the truth of what she said.