her manner
tranquil. She liked--as who would not?--on entering the school-room,
to feel that her sole presence sufficed to diffuse that order and
quiet which all the remonstrances, and even commands, of her underlings
frequently failed to enforce; she liked to stand in comparison, or
rather--contrast, with those who surrounded her, and to know that in
personal as well as mental advantages, she bore away the undisputed
palm of preference--(the three teachers were all plain.) Her pupils she
managed with such indulgence and address, taking always on herself the
office of recompenser and eulogist, and abandoning to her subalterns
every invidious task of blame and punishment, that they all regarded her
with deference, if not with affection; her teachers did not love her,
but they submitted because they were her inferiors in everything; the
various masters who attended her school were each and all in some way
or other under her influence; over one she had acquired power by her
skilful management of his bad temper; over another by little attentions
to his petty caprices; a third she had subdued by flattery; a fourth--a
timid man--she kept in awe by a sort of austere decision of mien; me,
she still watched, still tried by the most ingenious tests--she roved
round me, baffled, yet persevering; I believe she thought I was like
a smooth and bare precipice, which offered neither jutting stone nor
tree-root, nor tuft of grass to aid the climber. Now she flattered
with exquisite tact, now she moralized, now she tried how far I was
accessible to mercenary motives, then she disported on the brink of
affection--knowing that some men are won by weakness--anon, she talked
excellent sense, aware that others have the folly to admire judgment.
I found it at once pleasant and easy to evade all these efforts; it was
sweet, when she thought me nearly won, to turn round and to smile in
her very eyes, half scornfully, and then to witness her scarcely veiled,
though mute mortification. Still she persevered, and at last, I am bound
to confess it, her finger, essaying, proving every atom of the casket,
touched its secret spring, and for a moment the lid sprung open; she
laid her hand on the jewel within; whether she stole and broke it, or
whether the lid shut again with a snap on her fingers, read on, and you
shall know.

It happened that I came one day to give a lesson when I was indisposed;
I had a bad cold and a cough; two hours' incessant talkin