“You are very unfeeling,” said Nancy, with a quiver on her lip. For it would be in vain to attempt to delude the reader into the idea that this tall young lady in mourning who had taken the Wren Cottage, and was called Mrs. Arthur, was anybody but Nancy. Her disguise was transparent, indeed, to anyone whose suspicions had ever been awakened, and the very transparence of her disguise was part of the character of the girl, who had suffered a great deal indeed, and learned something, but who was still herself at bottom, notwithstanding the progress she had made. She had made a great deal of progress. She had read numbers of very heavy, very solid books, and could have passed an examination on various abstruse subjects which never could be of the slightest service to her. How was the poor girl to know? She was aware that reading books was the way to be educated, and she was too proud to be guided by anybody who knew better than she did. She had devoured a great deal of poetry, and many novels as well; though these she was rather ashamed of. But she knew that it must be right to work through the Encyclopædia, and to read history, and Locke upon the Human Understanding, and other volumes of solid reputation. No doubt they did her good, more or less, and the very effort to read them did her good. And she knew now all about those things which had puzzled her so much at Paris; about the Queen who was murdered, and the people whose heads were cut off; and had gone over all the collections of pictures open in London, and knew now, at least, the names of the painters with whom people are generally enraptured. Her mistakes in the old days thus gave her a certain enlightenment, revealing to her certain points on which she was very ignorant, and which it was right to know; but beyond these limits Nancy had not much information as to what was wanted for the education of a lady, and stumbled along in the dark, though with the best will in the world. But the occupation which this gave her was of the utmost importance to her, and had softened and consolidated her whole moral being. Further, she had tried music, which comes into the most elementary conception of a lady’s training, but had found this very hard work, neither her fingers nor her patience being equal to the strain upon them; but she had managed better with drawing, and had made a great many elaborate pencil copies, and some in chalk, which Matilda thought beautiful. When her father and mother both died, it was impossible to keep her longer in Underhayes. No one had any longer the smallest control over her. Matilda, though she was sensible, had never taken any lead in the family, and though she criticised, always obeyed the more potent impulse of her younger sister. Nancy had been as impulsive and imprudent in her present action as in all the previous movements of her life. She had given up her income from Arthur without telling anyone, to the great dismay of her sisters.