an individual of no social significance, and little burdened by
cash? They _did_ know it evidently: I saw quite well that they all, in
a moment's calculation, estimated me at about the same fractional
value. The fact seemed to me curious and pregnant: I would not disguise
from myself what it indicated, yet managed to keep up my spirits pretty
well under its pressure.

Having at last landed in a great hall, full of skylight glare, I made
my way somehow to what proved to be the coffee-room. It cannot be
denied that on entering this room I trembled somewhat; felt uncertain,
solitary, wretched; wished to Heaven I knew whether I was doing right
or wrong; felt convinced that it was the last, but could not help
myself. Acting in the spirit and with the calm of a fatalist, I sat
down at a small table, to which a waiter presently brought me some
breakfast; and I partook of that meal in a frame of mind not greatly
calculated to favour digestion. There were many other people
breakfasting at other tables in the room; I should have felt rather
more happy if amongst them all I could have seen any women; however,
there was not one--all present were men. But nobody seemed to think I
was doing anything strange; one or two gentlemen glanced at me
occasionally, but none stared obtrusively: I suppose if there was
anything eccentric in the business, they accounted for it by this word
"Anglaise!"

Breakfast over, I must again move--in what direction? "Go to Villette,"
said an inward voice; prompted doubtless by the recollection of this
slight sentence uttered carelessly and at random by Miss Fanshawe, as
she bid me good-by: "I wish you would come to Madame Beck's; she has
some marmots whom you might look after; she wants an English
gouvernante, or was wanting one two months ago."

Who Madame Beck was, where she lived, I knew not; I had asked, but the
question passed unheard: Miss Fanshawe, hurried away by her friends,
left it unanswered. I presumed Villette to be her residence--to
Villette I would go. The distance was forty miles. I knew I was
catching at straws; but in the wide and weltering deep where I found
myself, I would have caught at cobwebs. Having inquired about the means
of travelling to Villette, and secured a seat in the diligence, I
departed on the strength of this outline--this shadow of a project.
Before you pronounce on the rashness of the proceeding, reader, look
back to the point whence I started; consider the desert I