Nineteen years of age. Nineteen! For the last twelvemonth, since the completion of my education, I had helped in the school as one of the governesses. The Miss Barlieus, whose connexion was extensive amidst the English as well as the French, had undertaken the responsibility of "placing me out," as my trustees phrased it. When I was eighteen their task, as trustees, was over, and the annuity I had enjoyed ceased. Henceforth I had no friends in the world but the Miss Barlieus: and truly kind and good those ladies were to me. I was attacked with an illness soon after my eighteenth birthday: not a severe one, but lasting tolerably long; and that had caused me to remain the additional twelvemonth, for which I received a slight salary. They liked me, and I liked them. So I was to be a governess after all! The last descendant of the Herefords and the Keppe-Carews had no home in the world, no means of living, and must work for them. My pride rebelled against it now, as it never had when I was a child; and I made a resolution never to talk of my family. I was an orphan; I had no relatives living: that would be quite enough answer when asked about it. Keppe-Carew had again changed masters: a little lad of eight, whose dead father I had never seen, and who perhaps had never heard of me, was its owner now. I had never heard a syllable of Mr. Edwin Barley since I left him, or of any of his household, or of the events that had taken place there. That George Heneage had never been traced, I knew; that Mr. Edwin Barley was still seeking after him, I was quite sure: the lapse of years could not abate the anger of a man like him. Mrs. Hemson was dead now, a twelvemonth past; so that I was entirely alone in the world. As to the will, it had not been found, as was to be supposed, or the money would have been mine. My growth in years, the passing from the little girl into the woman, and the new ties and interests of my foreign school life had in a degree obliterated those unhappy events, and I scarcely ever gave even a thought to the past. Mr. and Mrs. Paler were staying temporarily at Nulle; well-connected English people, about to fix their residence in Paris. They were strangers to me personally, but the Miss Barlieus knew something of their family, and we heard that Mrs. Paler was inquiring for a governess; one who spoke thoroughly English, French, and German. Mademoiselle Annette thought it might suit me, and proposed to take me to call on them at the Lion d'Or hotel. I seized upon the idea eagerly. The word Paris had wrought its own charm. To be conveyed to that city of delight appeared only secondary to entering within the precincts of a modern Elysium. "Oh, Mademoiselle Annette, pray let us go! I might perhaps do for them." Mademoiselle Annette laughed at the eagerness so unequivocally betrayed. But she set off with me the same day.