“‘Ah!’ he said. ‘And without a character you have been unsuccessful!’ But I saw he was not sorry for me, only thinking what to do or how to do it. For I knew, as I know that I sit here in this room with its fire and the rain on the window, that he was going to engage me. “And he did. Without a rag of reference, with only a few questions--and now that I come to think of it he never asked me where I was educated. I couldn’t have told him. I suppose Mother Benedicta knows how I ran away from Lady Parr’s with--but I won’t write that name. “But it has all come to this: I, who had no hope of ever getting an engagement, am to be companion to a girl at a salary of a hundred pounds a year. And I know that I’m not fit to be with any girl; the five pounds that he gave me for expenses looks like a fee from the devil as it shines on the table. For the more I think of it, the more sure I am that he was certain I was a woman with a past and not anything else in the world. “But past or no past, I will write it down here in this book, and sign my name to it, that no girl shall ever learn harm from me, or anything but hatred for evil. My schooling has been hardly paid for; it can at least be useful in helping some poor girl to keep out of the agony I have known. There is no peace or joy for women like me, and I would never see any girl stray on the bitter road that I trod. If Mr. Egerton, for reasons of his own, has engaged me because I am what I am, he has burned his own boats. If the girl is as sly and sullen as he hints, I will be a better guardian for her than a saint like Mother Benedicta was for me. “I have read this over, and it seems far-fetched and ungrateful. The man is kind and he is giving me a chance to live honestly; but yet I cannot feel that in my heart. There is something behind his kindness. “Whether there is or not, I can’t get out of my bargain now. I am to go to Southampton to-morrow, to join Mr. Egerton and his ward on his yacht; a steam-yacht, thank goodness! I hate the sea. We are to go to Bermuda, of all places in the world! Not that I know any one there, but it seems the very end of the world. “Mr. Egerton has a house there, and if his ward likes it, we may stay till spring. It is all one to me, since I shall be out of England. To-morrow I must get those boxes at Paddington that I never meant to call for. I would be glad never to wear any of those clothes again, but I have no choice. The five pounds he gave me would not buy my ticket to Southampton and get me a governess’ outfit ‘warranted to wear’ into the bargain. “I write very prettily. As I look at the neat, close pages of this book, I wonder how they could have been written with so heavy a heart. The past sickens me and the future frightens me, though it may be with a senseless terror that I shall laugh at by and by.