“Ah, that story! How am I to tell it, I wonder, two words will comprise it all--sin and misery--misery and sin! For, buried alive here, as I am--buried alive, as I've always been--I know what both words mean; they have been branded on heart and brain in letters of fire. And that horrible monstrosity is the cause of all--that loathsome, misshapen, hideous abortion has banned and cursed my whole life! He is my first recollection. As far back as I can look through the dim eye of childhood's years, that horrible face, that gnarled and twisted trunk, those devilish eyes glare at me like the eyes and face of a wild beast. As memory grows stronger and more vivid, I can see that same face still--the dwarf! the dwarf! the dwarf!--Satan's true representative on earth, darkening and blighting ever passing year. I do not know where we lived, but I imagine it to have been one of the vilest and lowest dens in London, though the rooms I occupied were, for that matter, decent and orderly enough. Those rooms the daylight never entered, the windows were boarded up within, and fastened by shutters without, so that of the world beyond I was as ignorant as a child of two hours old. I saw but two human faces, his”--she seemed to hate him too much even to pronounce his name--“and his housekeeper's, a creature almost as vile as himself, and who is now a servant here; and with this precious pair to guard me I grew up to be fifteen years old. My outer life consisted of eating, sleeping, reading--for the wretch taught me to read--playing with my dogs and birds, and listening to old Margery's stories. But there was an inward life, fierce and strong, as it was rank and morbid, lived and brooded over alone, when Margery and her master fancied me sleeping in idiotic content. How were they to know that the creature they had reared and made ever had a thought of her own--ever wondered who she was, where she came from, what she was destined to be, and what lay in the great world beyond? The crooked little monster made a great mistake in teaching me to read, he should have known that books sow seed that grow up and flourish tall and green, till they become giants in strength. I knew enough to be certain there was a bright and glad world without, from which they shut me in and debarred me; and I knew enough to hate them both for it, with a strong and heartfelt hatred, only second to what I feel now.”