it plain
that they thought me 'a bore.' The servants, it was signified, 'detested
me;' _why_, I could never clearly comprehend. My pupils, I was told,
'however much they might love me, and how deep soever the interest I
might take in them, could not be my friends.' It was intimated that I
must 'live alone, and never transgress the invisible but rigid line
which established the difference between me and my employers.' My life
in this house was sedentary, solitary, constrained, joyless, toilsome.
The dreadful crushing of the animal spirits, the ever-prevailing sense
of friendlessness and homelessness consequent on this state of things
began ere long to produce mortal effects on my constitution. I sickened.
The lady of the house told me coolly I was the victim of 'wounded
vanity.' She hinted that if I did not make an effort to quell my
'ungodly discontent,' to cease 'murmuring against God's appointment,'
and to cultivate the profound humility befitting my station, my mind
would very likely 'go to pieces' on the rock that wrecked most of my
sisterhood--morbid self-esteem--and that I should die an inmate of a
lunatic asylum.

"I said nothing to Mrs. Hardman--it would have been useless; but to her
eldest daughter I one day dropped a few observations, which were
answered thus. There were hardships, she allowed, in the position of a
governess. 'Doubtless they had their trials; but,' she averred, with a
manner it makes me smile now to recall--'but it must be so. _She_' (Miss
H.) 'had neither view, hope, nor _wish_ to see these things remedied;
for in the inherent constitution of English habits, feelings, and
prejudices there was no possibility that they should be. Governesses,'
she observed, 'must ever be kept in a sort of isolation. It is the only
means of maintaining that distance which the reserve of English manners
and the decorum of English families exact.'

"I remember I sighed as Miss Hardman quitted my bedside. She caught the
sound, and turning, said severely, 'I fear, Miss Grey, you have
inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our fallen nature--the sin
of pride. You are proud, and therefore you are ungrateful too. Mamma
pays you a handsome salary, and if you had average sense you would
thankfully put up with much that is fatiguing to do and irksome to bear,
since it is so well made worth your while.'

"Miss Hardman, my love, was a very strong-minded young lady, of most
distinguished talents. The aristocracy ar