nse of your--your usefulness."

If any one has expected that Grace is about to conduct herself, during
this interview, in any wise like a prophetess, tragedy queen, or other
exalted personage; to stand upon her native independence, and scorning
the bounty of an aristocrat, to read the said aristocrat a lecture on
his duties and responsibilities, as landlord of Aberalva town; then will
that person be altogether disappointed. It would have looked very well,
doubtless: but it would have been equally untrue to Grace's womanhood,
and to her notions of Christianity. Whether all men were or were not
equal in the sight of Heaven, was a notion which, had never crossed her
mind. She knew that they would all be equal in heaven, and that was
enough for her. Meanwhile, she found lords and ladies on earth, and
seeing no open sin in the fact of their being richer and more powerful
than she was, she supposed that God had put them where they were; and
she accepted them simply as facts of His kingdom. Of course they had
their duties, as every one has: but what they were she did not know, or
care to know. To their own master they stood or fell; her business was
with her own duties, and with her own class, whose good and evil she
understood by practical experience. So when a live lord made his
appearance in her school, she looked at him with vague wonder and
admiration, as a being out of some other planet, for whom she had no
gauge or measure: she only believed that he had vast powers of doing
good unknown to her; and was delighted by seeing him condescend to play
with her children. The truth may be degrading, but it must be told.
People, of course, who know the hollowness of the world, and the vanity
of human wealth and honour, and are accustomed to live with lords and
ladies, see through all that, just as clearly as any American republican
does; and care no more about walking down Pall-Mall with the Marquis of
Carabas, who can get them a place or a living, than with Mr. Two-shoes,
who can only borrow ten pounds of them; but Grace was a poor simple
West-country girl; and as such we must excuse her, if, curtseying to the
very ground, with tears of gratitude in her eyes, she took the ten-pound
note, saying to herself, "Thank the Good Lord! This will just pay
mother's account at the mill."

Likewise we must excuse her if she trembled a little, being a young
woman--though being also a lady, she lost no jot of self-possession--
when his lords