“But, Lucy, how is that? Such an oracle really whets my curiosity. What am I to-day? What was I the yesterday of ten years back?” “Gracious to whatever pleased you—unkindly or cruel to nothing.” “There you are wrong; I think I was almost a brute to _you_, for instance.” “A brute! No, Graham: I should never have patiently endured brutality.” “_This_, however, I _do_ remember: quiet Lucy Snowe tasted nothing of my grace.” “As little of your cruelty.” “Why, had I been Nero himself, I could not have tormented a being inoffensive as a shadow.” I smiled; but I also hushed a groan. Oh!—I just wished he would let me alone—cease allusion to me. These epithets—these attributes I put from me. His “quiet Lucy Snowe,” his “inoffensive shadow,” I gave him back; not with scorn, but with extreme weariness: theirs was the coldness and the pressure of lead; let him whelm me with no such weight. Happily, he was soon on another theme. “On what terms were ‘little Polly’ and I? Unless my recollections deceive me, we were not foes—” “You speak very vaguely. Do you think little Polly’s memory, not more definite?” “Oh! we don’t talk of ‘little Polly’ _now_. Pray say, Miss de Bassompierre; and, of course, such a stately personage remembers nothing of Bretton. Look at her large eyes, Lucy; can they read a word in the page of memory? Are they the same which I used to direct to a horn-book? She does not know that I partly taught her to read.” “In the Bible on Sunday nights?” “She has a calm, delicate, rather fine profile now: once what a little restless, anxious countenance was hers! What a thing is a child’s preference—what a bubble! Would you believe it? that lady was fond of me!” “I think she was in some measure fond of you,” said I, moderately. “You don’t remember then? _I_ had forgotten; but I remember _now_. She liked me the best of whatever there was at Bretton.” “You thought so.” “I quite well recall it. I wish I could tell her all I recall; or rather, I wish some one, you for instance, would go behind and whisper it all in her ear, and I could have the delight—here, as I sit—of watching her look under the intelligence. Could you manage that, think you, Lucy, and make me ever grateful?” “Could I manage to make you ever grateful?” said I. “No, _I could not_.” And I felt my fingers work and my hands interlock: I felt, too, an inward courage, warm and resistant. In this matter I was not disposed to gratify Dr. John: not at all. With now welcome force, I realized his entire misapprehension of my character and nature. He wanted always to give me a role not mine. Nature and I opposed him. He did not at all guess what I felt: he did not read my eyes, or face, or gestures; though, I doubt not, all spoke. Leaning towards me coaxingly, he said, softly, “_Do_ content me, Lucy.”