When I went to be governess at Mrs Durham’s I was quite young. I had been “out” before, but only as nursery governess. Mine was not a very regular or, perhaps, a very good kind of education. My mother had been a governess before me, and not one of very high pretensions, as governesses are nowadays. I don’t think she ever knew anything herself, except a little music and a little French, which she had forgotten before my time. How my father and she met, and, still more wonderful, how they took to each other, is a thing I never could make out. Perhaps I was most fond of her, but certainly I was most proud of him, and liked to copy his ways, and to believe what my mother often said--that I was a Martindale every inch of me. This, poor soul, she meant as a reproach, but to me it sounded like a compliment. I was very silly and rather cruel, as young people are so often. My father had a great deal of contempt for her, and not much affection; and though I had a great deal of affection, I borrowed unconsciously his contempt, and thought myself justified in treating her as he did. She was wordy and weak in argument, and never knew when to stop. But he--when he had stated what he intended to do--would never answer any of her objections, or indeed take any notice of them, but listened to her with a contemptuous silence. I took to doing the same; and though I know better now, and am sorry I ever could have been so foolish and so unkind, yet the habit remains with me--not to take the trouble to reply to foolish arguments, but to do what I think right without saying anything about it. This habit, I may as well confess, has got me into trouble more than once; but I do not say that I am prepared to give it up, though I know I have taken harm by it, and no good, so far as I am aware.