The way in which this tranquil ease of possession was disturbed was a very gentle and gradual one--at least, so I can see now, though at the time it appeared to me most abrupt and terrible. My idea of my father was that he was old, as a child’s ideas generally are; but he was not old. He was about five-and-forty when I was fifteen. He was not tall--and he stooped, which made him look still less so. At fifteen I was as tall as he was. He had a handsome, refined face, with very clear features, and a sort of ivory complexion. His hair was worn off his temples, and there were a great many lines in his face--partly with trouble, partly with work; but his smile was the sweetest smile I ever saw, and he had a way of captivating everybody. I have heard it said since that this power of fascination did not last, and that he grew melancholy and monotonous after the first few times you had seen him; and though I was very angry when I heard this first, I can with an effort believe that it might be true. I suppose it was the same faculty which showed itself at church, where there were always new people coming, who attended closely for a few weeks and then went away. He was like a man who gives you everything he has at once, and then has nothing more for you. At home he was silent, always kind, but never saying much. I scarcely recollect ever to have been scolded by him. Ellen scolded me, and so did old Mrs Tufnell, and even Mrs Stephens next door; but papa only said, “Poor child!” with the air of a compassionate spectator, when I was complained of to him. Our chief conversation was at meals, when he would sometimes talk a little, and tell me of things he had seen or heard; and it was at tea one evening that he first brought forward the name of the other person who was henceforward to stand between us. No such thought was in his mind then, I am sure; but he was more communicative than usual. He told me that he had seen a young lady on one of his visits, in a very strange place for such a person to be found--in the back parlour of a small grocer’s shop which I knew quite well. He told me quite a long story about her--how she was an orphan and had been left destitute, and had been obliged to go back to her mother’s family, who had been a governess in her day, and married much above her. Her father, too, was dead, having been of no use whatever in the world or to her, and there was no prospect before her but that of going out to be a governess--a thing which papa seemed to think a great hardship for her. I had been trained to believe that some such place would have to be mine as papa got older and I grew a woman; therefore I was not at all shocked by the suggestion. I said: “Has she heard of any nice situation, papa?” with the quietest matter-of-fact acceptance of his words.