I do not remember now what I said to him when I heard this,--I know that my long suppressed feelings broke out in a storm of fury, and that for the moment he was completely taken aback by the force of my indignation. An American boarder in _our_ house!--it seemed to me as outrageous and undignified as the conduct of a person I once heard of, who, favoured by the Queen's patronage with 'free' apartments in Kensington Palace, took from time to time on the sly, an American or Colonial 'paying-guest,' who adopted forthwith the address of Her Majesty's birthplace as her own, thus lowering the whole prestige of that historic habitation. My wrath however was useless;--the bargain was arranged,--my father, regardless of his proud lineage and the social dignity of his position, had degraded himself, in my opinion, to the level of a sort of superior lodging-house keeper,--and from that time I lost all my former respect for him. Of course it can be argued that I was wrong,--that I ought to have honoured him for turning his name to monetary account by loaning it out as a protective shield and panoply for an American woman without anything but the dollars of a vulgar 'railway-king' to back her up in society,--but I could not see it in that light. I retreated into myself more than ever,--and became more than pleasantly known for my coldness, reserve and hauteur. Miss Chesney came, and strove hard to be my friend,--but she soon found that impossible. She is a good-hearted creature I believe,--but she is badly bred and badly trained as all her compatriots are, more or less, despite their smattering of an European education; I disliked her from the first, and have spared no pains to show it. Yet I know she will be Countess of Elton as soon as it is decently possible,--say, after the year's ceremonious mourning for my mother has expired, and perhaps three months' hypocritical wearing of black for me,--my father believes himself to be still young and passably good-looking, and he is quite incapable of resisting the fortune she will bring him. When she took up her fixed abode in our house and Aunt Charlotte became her paid chaperône, I seldom went out to any social gatherings, for I could not endure the idea of being seen in her companionship. I kept to my own room a great deal, and thus secluded, read many books. All the fashionable fiction of the day passed through my hands, much to my gradual enlightenment, if not to my edification. One day,--a day that is stamped on my memory as a kind of turning-point in my life,--I read a novel by a woman which I did not at first entirely understand,--but on going over some of its passages a second time, all at once its horrible lasciviousness flashed upon me, and filled me with such genuine disgust that I flung it on the ground in a fit