Other changes, however, happened to Giovanna, as she settled down at Whiteladies. She was without any fixed principles of morality, and had no code of any kind which interfered with her free action. To give up doing anything she wanted to do because it involved lying, or any kind of spiritual dishonesty, would never have occurred to her, nor was she capable of perceiving that there was anything wrong in securing her own advantage as she had done. But she was by no means all bad, any more than truthful and honorable persons are all good. Her own advantage, or what she thought her own advantage, and her own way, were paramount considerations with her; but having obtained these, Giovanna had no wish to hurt anybody, or to be unkind. She was indolent and loved ease, but still she was capable of taking trouble now and then to do some one else a service. She had had no moral training, and all her faculties were obtuse; and she had seen no prevailing rule but that of selfishness. Selfishness takes different aspects, according to the manner in which you look at it. When you have to maintain hardly, by a constant struggle, your own self against the encroachments and still more rampant selfishness of others, the struggle confers a certain beauty upon the object of it. Giovanna had wanted to have her own way, like the others of the family, but had been usually thrust into a corner, and prevented from having it. What wonder, then, that when she had a chance, she seized it, and emancipated herself, and secured her own comfort with the same total disregard to others which she had been used to see? But now, having got this--having for the moment all she wanted--an entire exemption from work, an existence full of external comfort, and circumstances around her which flattered her with a sense of an elevated position--she began to think a little. Nothing was exacted of her. If Miss Susan was not kind to her, she was not at least unkind, only withdrawing from her as much as possible, a thing which Giovanna felt to be quite natural, and in the quiet and silence the young woman’s mind began to work. I do not say her conscience, for that was not in the least awakened, nor was she conscious of any penitential regret in thinking of the past, or religious resolution for the future; it was her mind only that was concerned. She thought it might be as well to make certain changes in her habits. In her new existence, certain modifications of the old use and wont seemed reasonable. And then there gradually developed in her--an invaluable possession which sometimes does more for the character than high principle or good intention--a sense of the ludicrous. This was what Everard meant when he said there was fun in her. She had a sense of humor, a sense of the incongruities which affect some minds so much more powerfully by the fact of being absurd, than by the fact of being wrong. Giovanna, without any actual