aces.

I went among young women next, and I found them no better. Fair
words and fair pretences; but I penetrated below those assertions of
themselves and depreciations of me, and they were no better. Before
I left them, I learned that I had no grandmother and no recognised
relation. I carried the light of that information both into my past
and into my future. It showed me many new occasions on which people
triumphed over me, when they made a pretence of treating me with
consideration, or doing me a service.

A man of business had a small property in trust for me. I was to be
a governess; I became a governess; and went into the family of a poor
nobleman, where there were two daughters--little children, but the
parents wished them to grow up, if possible, under one instructress. The
mother was young and pretty. From the first, she made a show of behaving
to me with great delicacy. I kept my resentment to myself; but I knew
very well that it was her way of petting the knowledge that she was my
Mistress, and might have behaved differently to her servant if it had
been her fancy.

I say I did not resent it, nor did I; but I showed her, by not
gratifying her, that I understood her. When she pressed me to take wine,
I took water. If there happened to be anything choice at table, she
always sent it to me: but I always declined it, and ate of the rejected
dishes. These disappointments of her patronage were a sharp retort, and
made me feel independent.

I liked the children. They were timid, but on the whole disposed to
attach themselves to me. There was a nurse, however, in the house, a
rosy-faced woman always making an obtrusive pretence of being gay and
good-humoured, who had nursed them both, and who had secured their
affections before I saw them. I could almost have settled down to my
fate but for this woman. Her artful devices for keeping herself before
the children in constant competition with me, might have blinded many
in my place; but I saw through them from the first. On the pretext of
arranging my rooms and waiting on me and taking care of my wardrobe (all
of which she did busily), she was never absent. The most crafty of her
many subtleties was her feint of seeking to make the children fonder of
me. She would lead them to me and coax them to me. 'Come to good Miss
Wade, come to dear Miss Wade, come to pretty Miss Wade. She loves you
very much. Miss Wade is a clever lady, who has read heaps of books, and
can t