, work
loses much of its zest for everyone except the real student, who is
rarely to be found among men, still more rarely among women. And the
last thing Henrietta would ever be was unusual.

Clever, interesting schoolgirls are not at all uncommon, though not so
general as clever, interesting children. But there are few who remain
clever and interesting when they grow up. Uninspiring surroundings, and
contact with life, or mere accumulation of years, take something away.
Or perhaps it simply is that when they are grown up they are judged by a
more severe standard. Miss Arundel had been disappointed again and
again. But she would not have been surprised that Henrietta let
everything go, for she had always observed in her an unfortunate strain
of weakness.

Besides being weak, Henrietta was always affected by the people she was
with, and the atmosphere of home life was not encouraging to study.
"Reading Italian, my dear?" her mother would say. "Oh, can't you find
anything better to do than that? Surely there must be some mending;"
while her father advised her, through her mother, "not to become too
clever; it was a great pity for a girl to get too clever."

After all, there seemed no earthly reason why she should read Italian;
it gave no pleasure to herself or to anyone else. So she spent most of
the long leisure hours sitting by the window and thinking. She often
said to herself the verse of a poem then just published by Christina
Rossetti. She had seen it on a visit, copied it out, and learned it:

"Downstairs I laugh and sport and jest with all,
But in my solitary room above
I turn my face in silence to the wall:
My heart is breaking for a little love."

It did not quite apply to Henrietta, for she was not sporting and
jesting downstairs with anyone, but that verse was the greatest comfort
to her of those dreary years. The writer _must_ have been through it
all, she thought; she knows what it is. Not to be alone, to have
someone, though an unknown one, who could share it, lightened her
burden, when she was in a mood that it should be lightened.

She made up verses too, and wrote them in a pretty album she bought for
the purpose. They relieved her heart a little--at any rate it was a
distraction to think of the rhymes. She would have shown them to Carrie,
if she had had the slightest encouragement, but as Carrie gave no
encouragement, there was no one to see them.

"While Nature op'e