nd cry and say I was cruel, and
then I would hold her in my arms till morning: loving her as much as
ever, and often feeling as if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold
her in my arms and plunge to the bottom of a river--where I would still
hold her after we were both dead.

It came to an end, and I was relieved. In the family there was an aunt
who was not fond of me. I doubt if any of the family liked me much; but
I never wanted them to like me, being altogether bound up in the one
girl. The aunt was a young woman, and she had a serious way with her
eyes of watching me. She was an audacious woman, and openly looked
compassionately at me. After one of the nights that I have spoken of, I
came down into a greenhouse before breakfast. Charlotte (the name of
my false young friend) had gone down before me, and I heard this aunt
speaking to her about me as I entered. I stopped where I was, among the
leaves, and listened.

The aunt said, 'Charlotte, Miss Wade is wearing you to death, and this
must not continue.' I repeat the very words I heard.

Now, what did she answer? Did she say, 'It is I who am wearing her to
death, I who am keeping her on a rack and am the executioner, yet she
tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though she knows what
I make her undergo?' No; my first memorable experience was true to
what I knew her to be, and to all my experience. She began sobbing and
weeping (to secure the aunt's sympathy to herself), and said, 'Dear
aunt, she has an unhappy temper; other girls at school, besides I, try
hard to make it better; we all try hard.'

Upon that the aunt fondled her, as if she had said something noble
instead of despicable and false, and kept up the infamous pretence by
replying, 'But there are reasonable limits, my dear love, to everything,
and I see that this poor miserable girl causes you more constant and
useless distress than even so good an effort justifies.'

The poor miserable girl came out of her concealment, as you may be
prepared to hear, and said, 'Send me home.' I never said another word
to either of them, or to any of them, but 'Send me home, or I will
walk home alone, night and day!' When I got home, I told my supposed
grandmother that, unless I was sent away to finish my education
somewhere else before that girl came back, or before any one of them
came back, I would burn my sight away by throwing myself into the fire,
rather than I would endure to look at their plotting f