on, defying them all. A poor governess as good as turned out of my situation because the son of the house had fallen in love with me--a penniless creature without a home, with not a soul to stand by me in all that dark world. And yet I don’t remember anything I ever enjoyed more, than that journey by night. This will show you--and you may show it to Mary to convince her--how much I cared for George Durham. I suppose he was in love with me--at least what a young man not much over twenty considers love. That is six years ago; and probably he has always had a recollection, all this time, that he was in love with me, and thinks that he ought to have been faithful. I should not wonder if there was a kind of remorse in his mind to find that he had fallen in love with Mary, and cared for me no longer. It is a superstition with some people that, however foolish their first fancy was, they ought to hold by it; but I must say that I think it was very foolish, not to say cruel, of both of them, to make this breach on account of me. I got another situation after that, and did well enough--as governesses do. I never complained, or thought I had any reason to complain. I taught all I knew--not very much, but enough for most people. As for education, as people talk nowadays--of awakening the minds, and training the dispositions, and re-creating the children, so to speak, intellectually and morally--I never thought of such a thing; and why should I? That is the work of a mother, appointed by God, or of some great person endowed with great genius or influence--not of a young woman between eighteen and five-and-twenty, indifferently trained herself, with quite enough to do to master her own difficulties and keep herself afloat. I was not so impertinent, so presumptuous, or so foolish as to have any such idea. I taught them as well as I could; I tried to make them as fond of books as I was myself--I tried to get them to talk like gentlewomen, and not to be mean or false. I was not their mother, or their priest, but only their teacher. I had no theory then; but after one is thirty, one begins to have theories; and I can see what I meant in my earlier time by the light of what I think now. However, this is not much to the purpose. I was a successful governess on the whole; I got on very well, and I had nothing to find fault with. It is not a very happy life--when you are young, and hear pleasant sounds below-stairs, and have to sit reading by yourself in the school-room; when there is music and dancing perhaps, and merry talk, and you are left alone in that bare place with maps on the walls, and one candle--a girl does not feel happy; though on the whole, perhaps, the school-room is better than to sit in a corner of the drawing-room and be taken no notice of--which is the other alternative. There are a great many difficulties in the position altogether, as I can see now that I am older. When the