It is very hard, but I see no way but to bear it for the present, and that in silence. I cannot and will not trouble my dear Lady with any complaints, and I don't suppose she could help me, if I did. I have passed my promise to my Lady to stay for a year, unless I am sent away, and after all, my lot is not as hard as hers. As old Jane Betterton used to say at the end of her catalogue of troubles, to my father, "I hav'n't no old man to plague me, thank goodness!" I remember once, when dear father was teaching us Latin (and a kinder teacher sure never any one had), my growing terribly discouraged, and thinking I never should learn. Father comforted, instead of chiding me, when I burst out crying over Cæsar, his Commentaries, and told me that I had only come to the "hard place," that every one found just such a hard place in all serious undertakings, and if I would only do my best, and persevere, I should soon get past it, and find I had made a great step in advance; and so I did. I suppose I have now come to the hard place in my service, and if I can only live it over, I shall go on well again. If only I can be kept from wrong doing—but my natural temper is so warm, and I fear I have not made much progress in controlling it. I find it hardest to forgive Felicia. Her conduct seems so wantonly malicious—unless, indeed, she has grown tired of Aunt Willson, and wants the place herself. How she must have flattered Lady Jemima. I can see it all—how she hinted, and then drew back and let herself be questioned, and brought out her tale with seeming reluctance, and was so anxious all the time for my good. She is not at home to plague mother, that is one comfort, and she will never be able to hoodwink Aunt Willson, living, as she does, under the same roof. Well, well! "'Tis all in the day's work!" as Dick says, and we must take the bitter with the sweet. Oh, Dick, only to put my head down on thy honest shoulder, and tell all my troubles! _July 25._ Mr. Penrose preached this evening in the chapel, on charity. "The greatest of these is charity." He made a noble discourse, and spoke, methought, with some asperity of them that take up idle reports and are ready on the least evidence to believe evil of their fellows. I dared not glance at Lady Jemima, but I saw Mrs. Judith look rather uneasy, and after chapel she was unusually kind to me, and asked me to sup with her in her room, which I did. I thought she had something on her mind she wished to say, and at last it came out. "My dear, you are not a concealed Papist, are you?" "I must be very carefully concealed if I am, Mrs. Judith," I answered, laughingly; "for I have never even found it out myself. Whatever put it in your head to think me a Papist?"