“The two O’Nallys and the two old servants sympathized with me, and petted me, and cried over me. They never said a word against my father or my stepmother, personally or in my presence; but I often overheard them saying it was ‘a burning shame to neglect a child as I was neglected; that I ought to be with my father and stepmother, wherever they were,’ etc., etc. And their words deepened in me the sense of injury I felt. “And yet, in justice to my father and his wife, I must say that no wrong was intended me. We were all the victims of circumstances, as you will judge as I go on. “It was on this occasion that I wrote my first letter to my father, with much help from my governess. “As soon as I had got over my paroxysms of grief, which did not happen for days, Miss Murray insisted that I should answer my father’s letter and wish him joy of his heir, and send my love to my new mother and little brother. “This I most positively refused to do, declaring, with a new burst of tears, that I did not wish him any joy in his son; that I did not love my new brother, and that I had no new mother. I had but one mother, who was in heaven, and I should never have another. “My governess insisted, and tried to intimidate me into compliance. Whereupon I told her that she should not wish to make me write falsehoods, and that for my part I was quite ready to be burned at the stake, like Bishop Bonner, for the truth’s sake, rather than write what I did not feel and what was not true. “You see from this what a morbid, sensitive, extravagant little soul I was even at that tender age, and what exaggerated views I took of every trial. “My governess had to yield the point. How could she even wish her pupil to write falsely? We compromised the matter by my consenting to write a short note to my father, telling him that I was glad to hear that he was well, and asking him when he would come to see me. “A week later I got a most affectionate letter from my father, saying that he would visit his ‘dear little daughter’ as soon as he thought it would be safe to leave his wife, who had lain in a low condition ever since the arrival of her babe. “But my father did not come. “It was, in fact, October before the countess was able to leave her room. Then her physicians ordered her to the south of France, whither my father soon took her, with her infant son. “Another dreary winter followed me at Weirdwaste. The same confinement to the house, without companions, or amusements, or occupations—except my elderly attendants and my schoolbooks and music. No visitors except the vicar and the doctor. No visits except to church on exceptional Sundays when the roads were passable. I grew into a very strange child, precocious in a certain sort of intelligence gained from books, but backward in all knowledge of child life and depressed in spirits. “I received occasional letters from my father, and wrote others, touched up by my governess.”