".....was just an officer then, in command of the Northern Garrison. We were not yet in open rebellion, and after a fashion, were content to be subjects of the British crown. But we were never equals. The Purcevilles, outsiders that they were, still secured for themselves a beautiful estate, with a magnificent home and many servants. And one of them, by a strange twist of Fate, was I. "Hard times and higher taxes were beginning to take their toll on Bryan, and I felt useless enough in his house. So I determined to seek employment, and a place of my own, wherever I might find them. For I had not yet learned that my place was here, and that the world of men held nothing for me. Stubbornly I hoped, and stubbornly I fell into the trap. "As much as perhaps I should have known better, I solicited for, and was given the job of governess to young Stephen Purceville, aged then seven years. He was a hard and abrasive lad, his mother dead and gone years past. Yes, Mary, you begin to see how life repeats, and how I was laid bare for the final sting. I loved the boy, hard as it was sometimes. There was something in him, a brooding hunger of the eyes, which endeared him to me for all his excesses and bursts of temper. And if the truth be told, I saw the same hunger and restless need in the aggressive coldness, the outward ferocity of his father. "Fool, fool, fool!" she cursed herself. "We women find a strong, demanding master, and we think that because of his strength there must be goodness and nobility within, that if nurtured..... But it does not exist. Takers and users, they plunder our hearts and our bodies, then throw us to the dogs." "Then," asked Mary gently, trying hard not to upset her. "He didn't actually rape you?" "Aye, rape he did, though not in the sense that fear casts the word---alone in some barren place, far from help. But I said it was not willingly I took him to my bed, and it's the god's truth. He would come to my room of an evening, and letting himself in---he held keys to every room in the house, and none were spared---he would..... "This is a hard thing for me to tell you, girl. He forced himself on me, and at times I struggled, or even cried out, until a cuff or sharp threat silenced me. And yet, strange to say. . .after the incestuous horrors of my father's house, it was a kind of cleansing, purging pleasure to be so used, so long as I believed that somewhere, in the depths of his heart, he loved and cared for me. "Dear God, how blind we can be! It was not love he felt, nor secret tenderness. It was not even clean desire, but the novelty of a woman my age---thirty-three---who was still fair, and of violating by night the woman who coddled his son by day.