"Shall I make a clean breast of it?" said Miss Ross, drawing her chair near her friend. "You have often heard me say what a wretched childhood mine was, what an unhappy youth; but I have never told even _you_ of the one crowning sorrow of my life, the one outrage that turned my few good impulses and instincts into 'malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness.' As a child, I had no parents, no relations. I was brought up by a stern old woman in black, whom I had been taught to call 'Aunty,' but who was careful to impress on me, nevertheless, that I was not her niece; and I had no playmates, nor companions of my own age. I could have clung very fondly to anything that showed interest in me or loved me. I know it, because when I was taken across the Channel to school at Dieppe, I made acquaintance with the steward's dog in the steamer, and I shall never forget the wrench of parting with that friend of six hours' standing, nor the look in his meek brown eyes when I kissed him and wished him good-bye. I remember I cried for two hours, and 'Aunty' thought it was at parting with her. She scolded me without pity; but even then I was wise enough to know she would have reviled me still more bitterly had I told her the truth. How I hated that school at Dieppe, the _café au lait_, the long rolls of bread, the _bouilli_, and the fast days. The lessons I didn't so much mind, but the 'recreations,' as they called them, I thought would have driven me mad! I was quite a little girl when I went there, but nobody petted me, nor seemed to care one snap of the fingers whether I was dead or alive; though they said I was pretty, I don't think I could have been what is called 'a taking child.' I was often punished too, and always more or less in disgrace for 'insubordination,' because I lifted up my young voice and protested against the injustice to which we were daily victims. The school consisted of French and English girls. I liked the latter least; they were the most prejudiced and overbearing, affecting airs of superiority, and calling the former 'foreigners' in their own country! "When I left Dieppe and was removed to a convent in Paris everybody seemed glad, and I was delighted to go myself.