shape of house and work memoranda, and extracts
which, the better to help her memory, she had made from the poem-book
Vaudemont had given her. She gravely laid his letter by the side of
these specimens, and blushed at the contrast; yet, after all, her own
writing, though trembling and irresolute, was far from a bad or vulgar
hand. But emulation was now fairly roused within her. Vaudemont,
pre-occupied by more engrossing thoughts, and indeed, forgetting a
danger which had seemed so thoroughly to have passed away, did not in
his letter caution Fanny against going out alone. She remarked this; and
having completely recovered her own alarm at the attempt that had been
made on her liberty, she thought she was now released from her promise
to guard against a past and imaginary peril. So after dinner she slipped
out alone, and went to the mistress of the school where she had received
her elementary education. She had ever since continued her acquaintance
with that lady, who, kindhearted, and touched by her situation, often
employed her industry, and was far from blind to the improvement that
had for some time been silently working in the mind of her old pupil.

Fanny had a long conversation with this lady, and she brought back a
bundle of books. The light might have been seen that night, and many
nights after, burning long and late from her little window. And having
recovered her old freedom of habits, which Simon, poor man, did not
notice, and which Sarah, thinking that anything was better than moping
at home, did not remonstrate against, Fanny went out regularly for two
hours, or sometimes for even a longer period, every evening after
old Simon had composed himself to the nap that filled up the interval
between dinner and tea.

In a very short time--a time that with ordinary stimulants would have
seemed marvellously short--Fanny's handwriting was not the same thing;
her manner of talking became different; she no longer called herself
"Fanny" when she spoke; the music of her voice was more quiet and
settled; her sweet expression of face was more thoughtful; the eyes
seemed to have deepened in their very colour; she was no longer heard
chaunting to herself as she tripped along. The books that she nightly
fed on had passed into her mind; the poetry that had ever unconsciously
sported round her young years began now to create poetry in herself.
Nay, it might almost have seemed as if that restless disorder of the
intellect, whic