At the time she entered the _pensionat_ she was barely twenty years of age--she was now consequently just thirty--a handsome girl, although somewhat thin and pale, from the hard life and harder living she had gone through; and she now determined more than ever to take advantage of her looks and chances, literally to husband her resources. To endeavour in fact by a wealthy marriage--she had read and was told that eligible _partis_ were much sooner picked up on the continent than in the more calculating Britain--to rid herself for ever of her working life, and be above the danger of want, which, poor _intriguante_, she had already gone through, and the necessity for drudgery. She had no romance in her nature, no absurd ideas on the subject of love and happiness which the more benighted of us sometimes imagine to be indissolubly connected with the married state; but, taking her as she was, and putting such thoughts out of consideration, Clara Joyce, if she had had the chance, as has been before suggested, might have made a most exemplary wife for some one, and turned out, perhaps, a highly correct and eminently respectable mother of a family. Consider, now, she was brought up to slave for others, to subdue her own private feelings and wishes, to conceal her own thoughts and opinions, to enact a series of petty deceptions and tell white lies every day. How many are there not of our noble army of British matrons who go through the same parts every day? Fancy how Joan has to wheedle old Darby, and laugh at his stale jokes and "keep up appearances," and slave for the children, so that her life is one long drudgery, the same as Clara's. _Ma foi_! there are slaves and slaves, many whose black skins are hidden by a white mask, and whose chains clank beneath their silk or merino gowns.