Chapter 21 - Page 2

bedroom at night, I would reproach
her with my perfect knowledge of her baseness; and then she would
cry and cry and say I was cruel, and then I would hold her in my
arms till morning: loving her as much as ever, and often feeling as
if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold her in my arms and
plunge to the bottom of a river--where I would still hold her after
we were both dead.

It came to an end, and I was relieved. In the family there was an
aunt who was not fond of me. I doubt if any of the family liked me
much; but I never wanted them to like me, being altogether bound up
in the one girl. The aunt was a young woman, and she had a serious
way with her eyes of watching me. She was an audacious woman, and
openly looked compassionately at me. After one of the nights that
I have spoken of, I came down into a greenhouse before breakfast.
Charlotte (the name of my false young friend) had gone down before
me, and I heard this aunt speaking to her about me as I entered.
I stopped where I was, among the leaves, and listened.

The aunt said, 'Charlotte, Miss Wade is wearing you to death, and
this must not continue.' I repeat the very words I heard.

Now, what did she answer? Did she say, 'It is I who am wearing her
to death, I who am keeping her on a rack and am the executioner,
yet she tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though
she knows what I make her undergo?' No; my first memorable
experience was true to what I knew her to be, and to all my
experience. She began sobbing and weeping (to secure the aunt's
sympathy to herself), and said, 'Dear aunt, she has an unhappy
temper; other girls at school, besides I, try hard to make it
better; we all try hard.'

Upon that the aunt fondled her, as if she had said something noble
instead of despicable and false, and kept up the infamous pretence
by replying, 'But there are reasonable limits, my dear love, to
everything, and I see that this poor miserable girl causes you more
constant and useless distress than even so good an effort
justifies.'

The poor miserable girl came out of her concealment, as you may be
prepared to hear, and said, 'Send me home.' I never said another
word to either of them, or to any of them, but 'Send me home, or I
will walk home alone, night and day!' When I got home, I told my
supposed grandmother that, unless I was sent away to finish my
education somewhere else before that girl came back, or before any
one of them came back, I would burn my sight away by throwing
myself into the fire, rather than I would endure to look at their
plotting faces.

I went among young women next, and I found them no better. Fair
words and fair pretences; but I penetrated below those assertions
of