have patiently endured brutality."

"_This_, however, I _do_ remember: quiet Lucy Snowe tasted nothing of
my grace."

"As little of your cruelty."

"Why, had I been Nero himself, I could not have tormented a being
inoffensive as a shadow."

I smiled; but I also hushed a groan. Oh!--I just wished he would let me
alone--cease allusion to me. These epithets--these attributes I put
from me. His "quiet Lucy Snowe," his "inoffensive shadow," I gave him
back; not with scorn, but with extreme weariness: theirs was the
coldness and the pressure of lead; let him whelm me with no such
weight. Happily, he was soon on another theme.

"On what terms were 'little Polly' and I? Unless my recollections
deceive me, we were not foes--"

"You speak very vaguely. Do you think little Polly's memory, not more
definite?"

"Oh! we don't talk of 'little Polly' _now_. Pray say, Miss de
Bassompierre; and, of course, such a stately personage remembers
nothing of Bretton. Look at her large eyes, Lucy; can they read a word
in the page of memory? Are they the same which I used to direct to a
horn-book? She does not know that I partly taught her to read."

"In the Bible on Sunday nights?"

"She has a calm, delicate, rather fine profile now: once what a little
restless, anxious countenance was hers! What a thing is a child's
preference--what a bubble! Would you believe it? that lady was fond of
me!"

"I think she was in some measure fond of you," said I, moderately.

"You don't remember then? _I_ had forgotten; but I remember _now_. She
liked me the best of whatever there was at Bretton."

"You thought so."

"I quite well recall it. I wish I could tell her all I recall; or
rather, I wish some one, you for instance, would go behind and whisper
it all in her ear, and I could have the delight--here, as I sit--of
watching her look under the intelligence. Could you manage that, think
you, Lucy, and make me ever grateful?"

"Could I manage to make you ever grateful?" said I. "No, _I could
not_." And I felt my fingers work and my hands interlock: I felt, too,
an inward courage, warm and resistant. In this matter I was not
disposed to gratify Dr. John: not at all. With now welcome force, I
realized his entire misapprehension of my character and nature. He
wanted always to give me a role not mine. Nature and I opposed him. He
did not at all guess what I felt: he did not read my eyes, or face, or
gestures; though, I doubt not, all spoke. Leani