r
distinction if she were only given the opportunity of employing it; she
believed that she had an affection for children, and a natural talent
for training them, though she never saw any at Cullerne. With gifts
such as these, which must be patent to others as well as herself, there
would surely be no difficulty in obtaining an excellent place as
governess if she should ever determine to adopt that walk of life; and
she was sometimes inclined to gird at Fate, which for the present led
her to deprive the world of these benefits.

In her inmost heart, however, she doubted whether she would be really
justified in devoting herself to teaching; for she was conscious that
she might be called to fill a higher mission, and to instruct by the pen
rather than by word of mouth. As every soldier carries in his knapsack
the baton of the Field Marshal, so every girl in her teens knows that
there lie hidden in the recesses of her _armoire_, the robes and coronet
and full insignia of a first-rate novelist. She may not choose to take
them out and air them, the crown may tarnish by disuse, the moth of
indolence may corrupt, but there lies the panoply in which she may on
any day appear fully dight, for the astonishment of an awakening world.
Jane Austen and Maria Edgworth are heroines, whose aureoles shine in the
painted windows of such airy castles; Charlotte Bronte wrote her
masterpieces in a seclusion as deep as that of Bellevue Lodge; and
Anastasia Joliffe thought many a time of that day when, afar off from
her watch-tower in quiet Cullerne, she would follow the triumphant
progress of an epoch-making romance.

It would be published under a _nom de plume_, of course, she would not
use her own name till she had felt her feet; and the choice of the
pseudonym was the only definite step towards this venture that she had
yet made. The period was still uncertain. Sometimes the action was to
be placed in the eighteenth century, with tall silver urns and
spindled-legged tables, and breast-waisted dresses; sometimes in the
struggle of the Roses, when barons swam rivers in full armour after a
bloody bout; sometimes in the Civil War, when Vandyke drew the arched
eyebrow and taper hand, and when the shadow of death was over all.

It was to the Civil War that her fancy turned oftenest, and now and
again, as she sat before her looking-glass, she fancied that she had a
Vandyke face herself. And so it was indeed; and if the mirror was
fogged