like a fantastic doll, flitting from one room to
another, listening to the conversation of the ladies and admiring their
costumes. Every summer I came home for a time, but I found home dull
after Paris, and I was rather in awe of my mother's grave face and quiet
ways. She always parted with me against her will--I knew that--but it
was my father's wish that I should have a Parisian education.

I was just seventeen, on the point of leaving school, bewitched by
vanity and arrogance and the delights of the world, when the dreadful
news came--you know--about my father, his ruin and disgrace. The effect
on me was like nothing you could enter into or conceive. I think it
deprived me even of reason, such reason as I had. I had nothing in
me--nothing had ever been put in me--to enable me to endure such a
horrible reverse.

My mother had written to that friend, the lady I have mentioned, begging
her to break the news to me. She, however, was on the point of leaving
Paris for her country chateau, and simply wrote to madame, the mistress
of my school, transferring the unpleasant task to her. She sent her love
to me, and assured me she was very sorry, _desolee_, that she could not
delay, to pay me a visit. I have never seen her since.

And so the whole school knew of my fall and disgrace as soon as I
learned it myself. The first thing I did when I understood the full
extent of my humiliation was to seize my hat and cloak, and rush out of
the house with the intention of never coming back, never being seen
again by anyone who had known me. But after walking Paris for several
hours, and getting two or three rough frights through being alone and
unprotected, I was overcome with fear and fatigue, and was obliged to
return by evening, hungry, weary, and sullen, to the school.

I took it for granted that all the world would now be my enemy, and,
determined not to wait to be shuffled off by my friends, I assumed at
once an air of hauteur and defiance which estranged me from every one.
My mother, my poor mother, wrote to me, begging me to be patient until
she should find it convenient to bring me home. Patient! Oh dear, I did
not know the meaning of the word! No, I would not go home; I would
change my name and never willingly see again the face of one who knew
me.

Every day I searched the papers, and soon saw an advertisement which I
thought might suit me. An English lady in Paris required an English
companion, "young, cheerful, and we