you are his favourite."

"Am I Graham's favourite?"

"Yes, more than any little child I know."

The assurance soothed her, and she smiled in her anguish. As I warmed
the shivering, capricious little creature in my arms I wondered how she
would battle with life, and bear its shocks, repulses, and humiliations.

_II.--Madame Beck's School_

The next eight years of my life brought changes. My own household and
that of the Brettons suffered wreck. My friends went abroad and were
lost sight of, and I, after a period of companionship with a woman of
fortune, found myself, at her death, with fifteen pounds in my pocket
looking for a new place. Then it was that I saw mentally within reach
what I had never yet beheld with my bodily eyes--I saw London.

When I awoke there next morning, my spirit shook its always fettered
wings half loose. I had a feeling as if I were at last about to taste
life. In that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah's gourd. I wandered
whither chance might lead in a still ecstasy of freedom and enjoyment.

That evening I formed a project of crossing to a continental port, and
finding a vessel was about to start, I joined her at once in the river.
When the packet sailed at sunrise, I found the only passenger on board
to whom I cared to speak--and who, indeed, insisted on speaking to
me--was a girl of seventeen on her way to school in the city of
Villette. Miss Ginevra Fanshawe carelessly ran on with a full account of
herself, her school at Madame Beck's, her poverty at home, her education
by her godfather, De Bassompierre, who lived in France, her want of
accomplishments--except that she could talk, play, and dance--and the
need for her to marry a rather elderly gentleman with cash.

It was this irresponsible talk, no doubt, that led me, in the absence of
any other leading, to make Villette my destination. On my arrival there,
an English gentleman, young, distinguished, and handsome, observing my
inability to make myself understood at the bureau where the diligence
stopped, inquired kindly if I had any friends in the city, and on my
replying that I had not, gave me the address of such an inn as I wanted,
and personally directed me part of the way. Even then, however, I failed
in the gloom to find the inn, and was becoming quite exhausted, when
over the door of a house, loftier by a storey than those around it, I
saw a brass plate with the inscription, "Pensionnat de Demoiselles,"
and, beneath,