"Although I knew my mother's strong character, I was infatuated enough to believe what I said. Where was the heart so stony that would not warm to that fair and gentle creature? Where the pride so stubborn which that tender influence could not bend? "I had the banns put up at the church of St. George the Martyr, assured that Martha's rheumatism and Benjamin's lethargic temper would prevent either of them attending the morning service on any of the three fateful Sundays. If Martha went to church at all, she crept there in the evening, after tea. She liked the gaslights and the evening warmth, the short prayers, and the long sermon, and she met her own class among the congregation. I felt tolerably safe about the banns. "Had my mother been in good health, it would have been difficult for me to spend so many of my evenings away from home; but the neuralgic affection which had troubled her in Suffolk had not been subjugated by the great Dr. Gull's treatment, and she passed a good deal of her life in her own rooms and in semi-darkness, ministered to by a lady who had been a member of our household ever since my father's death, and whose presence had been the only drawback to my home happiness. "This lady was my mother's governess--Miss Marjorum--a woman of considerable brain power, wide knowledge of English and German literature, and a style of pianoforte playing which always had the effect of cold water down my back. And yet Miss Marjorum played correctly. She introduced no discords into that hard, dry music, which seemed to me to have been written expressly for her hard and precise finger-tips, bony knuckles, and broad, strong hand, with a thumb which she boasted of as resembling Thalberg's. In a difficult and complicated movement Miss Marjorum's thumb worked wonders. It was ubiquitous; it turned under and over, and rapped out sharp staccato notes in the midst of presto runs, or held rigid semibreves while the active fingers fired volleys of chords, shrilled out a six-bar shake, or raced the bass with lightning triplets. In whatever entanglement of florid ornament Liszt or Thalberg had disguised a melody, Miss Marjorum's thumb could search it out and drum it into her auditors. "Miss Marjorum was on the wrong side of fifty. She had a squat figure and a masculine countenance, and her voice was deep and strong, like the voice of a man. She dressed with a studious sobriety in dark cloth or in grey alpaca, according to the seasons, and in the evening she generally wore plaid poplin, which ruled her square, squat figure into smaller squares. I have observed an affinity between plain people and plaid poplin.