Everything seemed to go against me from the time of that wedding. In the first place, I resented having a stepmother, and finding myself forced suddenly into terms of intimacy with the three strangers (her and her two daughters) who had all at once become part of my family. Then came the termination of the foreign wanderings that I had found so pleasant. And now came the culminating misery of being under the commands of a selfish, vulgar, lying, bullying, stingy, pretentious, plausible, tyrannical woman, whom I could not endure, and who fully returned my dislike. I had an unlucky knack of perpetually irritating her, and was always sure to be in the wrong in her eyes. Either I said or did something that was contrary to her notions of what I ought to have said or done; or I scandalised her by displaying grievous ignorance of some subject which she deemed an essential branch of knowledge; or else I shocked her prejudices in some other way. She was not the woman to put up quietly with offences of this kind in her own household, and proceeded without delay to attempt to remedy my deficiencies. Accordingly she informed my father that she considered my mental condition to have been neglected terribly; that I had been allowed to run wild till I was very nearly ruined; and that she saw no chance of my ever becoming a properly behaved young lady and decent member of society unless a governess were procured for me immediately, and I were kept strictly to the schoolroom until such time as I should come out. Should she, therefore, engage a governess? My father, as usual, made no objection to a proposal which would in no way interfere with his own comfort. All he said was that she could do just as she thought best about it; that he did not himself see much to complain of in me, and had thought I was not at all bad company, considering my youth; but that he had no doubt she understood better than him what was necessary for girls, and that whatever she did was sure to be right. Armed with this permission, she at once took steps to carry out her intention, and a few days afterwards announced to me the contemplated innovation.