eature, she remained still, without
indignation, without anger. She stood, a frail and passive vessel into
which the other went on pouring all the accumulated dislike for all her
pupils, her scorn of all her employers (the ducal one included), the
accumulated resentment, the infinite hatred of all these unrelieved
years of--I won't say hypocrisy. The practice of perfect hypocrisy is a
relief in itself, a secret triumph of the vilest sort, no doubt, but
still a way of getting even with the common morality from which some of
us appear to suffer so much. No! I will say the years, the passionate,
bitter years, of restraint, the iron, admirably mannered restraint at
every moment, in a never-failing perfect correctness of speech, glances,
movements, smiles, gestures, establishing for her a high reputation, an
impressive record of success in her sphere. It had been like living
half-strangled for years."

And all this torture for nothing, in the end! What looked at last like
a possible prize (oh, without illusions! but still a prize) broken in
her hands, fallen in the dust, the bitter dust, of disappointment, she
revelled in the miserable revenge--pretty safe too--only regretting the
unworthiness of the girlish figure which stood for so much she had
longed to be able to spit venom at, if only once, in perfect liberty.
The presence of the young man at her back increased both her
satisfaction and her rage. But the very violence of the attack seemed
to defeat its end by rendering the representative victim as it were
insensible. The cause of this outrage naturally escaping the girl's
imagination her attitude was in effect that of dense, hopeless
stupidity. And it is a fact that the worst shocks of life are often
received without outcries, without gestures, without a flow of tears and
the convulsions of sobbing. The insatiable governess missed these signs
exceedingly. This pitiful stolidity was only a fresh provocation. Yet
the poor girl was deadly pale.

"I was cold," she used to explain to Mrs Fyne. "I had had time to get
terrified. She had pushed her face so near mine and her teeth looked as
though she wanted to bite me. Her eyes seemed to have become quite dry,
hard and small in a lot of horrible wrinkles. I was too afraid of her
to shudder, too afraid of her to put my fingers to my ears. I didn't
know what I expected her to call me next, but when she told me I was no
better than a beggar--that there would be n