But the now passed and the never came. She lifted up her head and pushed me away; she looked at me with cold stony eyes; she relapsed without a moment’s interval into her usual chilly, common-place, fretful, tone--that tone of a discontented mind and closed heart which had disturbed and irritated mine for years. All her old self returned to her in an instant. Even her passion had been elevating and great in comparison. She looked at me with her cold observant eyes, and bade me get up, and not look so like a fool. “But it is impossible to think of teaching you what anybody else of your age and position must have learned thirty years ago,” she said, twitching her dress, which, when I foolishly threw myself down beside her, I had put my knee upon unawares, from under me. I cannot describe to anybody the mortified, indignant feeling with which I scrambled up. Think of going down upon my knees to her, ready to do anything or give up anything in the world for her, and meeting this reception for my pains! I felt almost more bitterly humiliated and ashamed than if I had been doing something wrong. I, who was not a young girl but an elderly woman, long accustomed to be respected and obeyed! If she had studied how to wound me most deeply, she could not have succeeded better. I got up stumbling over my own dress, and hastily went out of the room. I even went out of the house, to calm myself down before I met anybody. I would not like to confess to all the angry thoughts that came into my mind for the next hour in the garden. I walked about thinking to get rid of them, but they only grew more and more vivid. My affection was rejected and myself insulted at the same moment. You would not suppose, perhaps, that one old woman could do as much for another; but I assure you, Sarah had wounded me as deeply as if we had been a couple of young men. When I found my temper was not going down as it ought to do, but on the contrary my imagination was busy concocting all sorts of revengeful things to say to her, I changed my plan, and went back to the library and looked over the newspapers. Don’t go and think over it, dear good people, when you feel very much insulted and angry. Read the papers or a novel. I went down naturally when I stopped thinking. After all, poor Sarah! poor Sarah! whom did she harm by it? only herself, not me.