'As I told you before,' she writes, 'M. and Madame Heger are the only two persons in the house for whom I really experience regard and esteem; and of course I cannot be always with them, nor even very often. They told me, when I first returned, that I was to consider their sitting-room my sitting-room, and to go there whenever I was not engaged in the schoolroom. This, however, I cannot do. In the daytime it is a public room, where music-masters and mistresses are constantly passing in and out; and in the evening I will not, and ought not, to intrude on M. and Madame Heger and their children. Thus I am a good deal by myself; but that does not signify. I now regularly give English lessons to M. Heger and his brother-in-law. They get on with wonderful rapidity, especially the first.[1] So that, up to this date, no cloud is visible. But by May 29 there is a cloud above the horizon. It is no bigger than 'a man's hand' as yet: but it is charged with electricity, and one knows the storm is gathering. This time Charlotte is writing to Emily, _who never liked M. Heger for her part_. 'Things wag on much as usual here, only Mlle. Blanche and Mlle. Haussé are at present on a system of war without quarter. They hate each other like two cats. Mlle. Blanche frightens Mlle. Haussé by her white passions, for they quarrel venomously; Mlle. Haussé complains that when Mlle. Blanche is in a fury "_elle n'a pas de lèvres_." I find also that Mlle. Sophie dislikes Mlle. Blanche extremely. She says she is heartless, insincere and vindictive, which epithets, I assure you, are richly deserved. _Also I find she is the regular spy of Madame Heger, to whom she reports everything. Also she invents, which I should not have thought_. I am [not] richly off for companionship in these parts. _Of late days, M. and Madame Heger rarely speak to me; and I really don't pretend to care a fig for anybody else in the establishment_. You are not to suppose by that expression that I am under the influence of _warm_ affection for Madame Heger. _I am convinced she does not like me: why, I can't tell_. (O Charlotte!) _Nor do I think she herself has any definite reason for this aversion_.(!) But for one thing, she cannot understand why I do not make intimate friends of Mesdames Blanche, Sophie and Haussé. M. Heger is wondrously influenced by Madame: and I should not wonder if he disapproves very much of my unamiable want of sociability. He has already given me a brief lecture on universal _bienveillance_; and perceiving that I don't improve in consequence, I fancy he has taken to considering me as a person to be let alone, left to the error of her ways, and consequently he has, in a great measure, withdrawn the light of his countenance; and I get on from day to day, in a Robinson Crusoe like condition, very lonely. That does not signify; in other respects I have nothing substantial to complain of, nor is even this a cause of complaint. _Except for the loss of M. Heger's goodwill