I entered; and the next moment I was in the arms of the mysterious and very beautiful lady that had called to see me the few times that I have recorded; and who, I conceived, was intimately connected with my existence. I think that I have before said that she never avowed herself, either to my nurse or to myself, as more than my godmother. She evinced a brief, but violent emotion; and then controlled her features to a very staid and matronly expression. For myself I wept most bitterly; from many mingled emotions; but, to the shame of human nature, and of my own, wounded pride was the most intolerable pang that I felt. In all my day-dreams, I had made this lady the presiding genius. I gave her, in my inmost heart, all the reverence and the filial affection of a son; but it was the implied understanding between my love and my vanity, that in joining herself to me as a mother, she was to bestow upon me a duchess at least; though I should not have thought myself over-well used had it been a princess. And here were all these glorious anticipations merged, sunk, destroyed, in the person of a boarding-school mistress of about twenty boys, myself the biggest. It was no use that I said to myself, over and over again, she is not less lovely--her voice less musical, her manner less endearing, or her apparel less rich. The startling truth was ever in my ear--she "keeps a school," and consequently, she cannot be my mother. She could not know what was passing in my mind; but it was evident that my grief was of that intensity that nearly approached to misery. She took me by the hand, showed me my nice little bed, the large garden, the river that ran at the bottom of it, and placed before me fruit and cakes; I would not be consoled; what business had she to be a schoolmistress? I had a thousand times rather have had Mrs Brandon for a mother again--she had never deceived me. But I was soon aware that this lady, whom I now, for the first time, heard named, as Mrs Cherfeuil, was as little disposed to grant me the honour of calling her mother, as I was to bestow it. I was introduced to her husband as the son of a female friend of hers of early life; that she had stood godmother to me, that my parentage was respectable; and, as she before had sufficient references to satisfy him from the agent, who had called a week before my arrival, the good man thought there was nothing singular in the affair.