With Emmeline, though there were naturally some faults to correct, an indolence and weakness to overcome, and apparently no remarkable natural aptitude for acquirement, her task was comparatively easy, for her pupil had the capabilities, not only of affection but of reverence, to a very great extent, and once loving and respecting Mrs. Harcourt, not a command was neglected nor a wish unfulfilled. Eleanor, on the contrary, though so gifted that teaching might have been a complete labor of love--by self-will, violent passions, and a most determined want of veneration, even, of common respect, a resolute opposition from her earliest years to the wishes of Mrs. Harcourt, because she was merely a governess, so much her inferior in rank, rendered the task of education one of the most difficult and painful that can be conceived--increased from the injudicious partiality of Lord Delmont. It was not indeed the culpable negligence and dislike which Eleanor afterward displayed toward her own, but originating in the fancy that Mrs. Harcourt was unjust, and Emmeline was her favorite. Lord Delmont was one of those unfortunately weak, irresolute characters, that only behold the surface of things, and are therefore utterly incapable of acting either with vigor or judgment. When he did venture into the precincts of his daughters' apartments, he generally found Eleanor in sobs and tears, and Emmeline quietly pursuing her daily duties. That Mrs. Harcourt often entreated his influence with her younger pupil, to change her course of conduct, he never remembered longer than the time her expostulations lasted. Once or twice indeed he did begin to speak seriously, but Eleanor would throw her arms round his neck and kiss him, call him every endearing name, and beg him not to look so much like grave, cross Mrs. Harcourt, or she should think she had indeed no one to love her; and her beautiful eyes would swell with tears, and her voice quiver, so that her gratified father would forget all his reproof, and give her some indulgence to make up for the injustice and harshness she encountered in the school-room. Her power once thus experienced, of course, was never resigned. Her father's appearance in their study was always the signal for her tears, which she knew would confirm all his ideas of Mrs. Harcourt's unjust partiality.