ch her unhappy education had left her, prevented
her, until she found that she had no time beyond the present instant left
for satisfying her curiosity on so important a point, when, in a
considerable flutter of spirits, she whispered to Ellen, but in a voice
sufficiently articulate to be heard by others--"Pray what did your papa say
of me?"

"That you were very much to be pitied."

"Pitied! Pray what am I to be pitied for?"

Ellen blushed very deeply: she could not answer a question which called
down confusion on the head of her who asked it--one, too, whom she was
inclined to love, and whose petulance towards herself, however unprovoked,
she had already forgiven. She looked wistfully in the face of her mamma,
who replied for her--"We all think you are much to be pitied, because you
are evidently a poor, little, forlorn, ignorant child, without friends, and
under the dominion of a cruel enemy, that renders you so frightful, it is
scarcely possible for even the most humane people to treat you with
kindness, or even endure you."

Matilda involuntarily started up, and examined herself in the
looking-glass.--"If I had happened to be your _own_ daughter, ma'am," she
said, crying again, "you would not have thought me ugly; but because I come
from Barbadoes, you don't like me; and it is cruel and wicked to treat me
so. But I will go back--I will--I will."

"I wish most sincerely you had never come, for it is painful to me to
witness the folly and sin you are guilty of; but, since you are here, I
will endeavour to bear with you, until I have found a good school to send
you to. If you would give yourself time to consider, you would know that
the enemy I spoke of is your own temper, which would render even perfect
beauty hideous; you know very well that I received you with the greatest
kindness, and that you have outraged that kindness. But I can forgive you,
because I see that you are a silly child, who fancies herself of
importance; whereas children, however they may be situated, are poor
dependent creatures."

Matilda answered only by a scornful toss of her head, and uttering the
word--"Dependent!"

"Edmund," said Mrs. Harewood, taking no notice of her insolent look, "you
are a strong healthy boy, forward in your education, capable of reflection,
and decidedly superior, not only in age, but wisdom, to any other in
the room; answer me candidly, as if you were speaking to a boy like
yourself--Do you feel it possible so