“His confidence in me knew no bounds.  He was uneasy if I was not by to advise him in the simplest matters.  My ears were the first to which he confided his insane ambition on the subject of his daughter—­his anxiety to see her marry above her station—­his stupid resolution to give her the false, flippant, fashionable education which she subsequently received.  I thwarted his plans in nothing, openly—­counteracted them in everything, secretly.  The more I strengthened my sources of influence over Margaret, the more pleased he was.  He was delighted to hear her constantly referring to me about her home-lessons; to see her coming to me, evening after evening, to learn new occupations and amusements.  He suspected I had been a gentleman; he had been told I spoke pure English; he felt sure I had received a first-rate education—­I was nearly as good for Margaret as good society itself!  When she grew older, and went to the fashionable school, as her father had declared she should, my offer to keep up her lessons in the holidays, and to examine what progress she had made, when she came home regularly every fortnight for the Sunday, was accepted with greedy readiness, and acknowledged with servile gratitude.  At this time, Mr. Sherwin’s own estimate of me, among his friends, was, that he had got me for half nothing, and that I was worth more to him than a thousand a-year.

“But there was one member of the family who suspected my intentions from the first.  Mrs. Sherwin—­the weak, timid, sickly woman, whose opinion nobody regarded, whose character nobody understood—­Mrs. Sherwin, of all those who dwelt in the house, or came to the house, was the only one whose looks, words, and manner kept me constantly on my guard.  The very first time we saw each other, that woman doubted me, as I doubted her; and for ever afterwards, when we met, she was on the watch.  This mutual distrust, this antagonism of our two natures, never openly proclaimed itself, and never wore away.  My chance of security lay, not so much in my own caution, and my perfect command of look and action under all emergencies, as in the self-distrust and timidity of her nature; in the helpless inferiority of position to which her husband’s want of affection, and her daughter’s want of respect, condemned her in her own house; and in the influence of repulsion—­at times, even of absolute terror—­which my presence had the power of communicating to her.  Suspecting what I am assured she suspected—­incapable as she was of rendering her suspicions certainties—­knowing beforehand, as she must have known, that no words she could speak would gain the smallest respect or credit from her husband or her child—­that woman’s life, while I was at North Villa, must have been a life of the direst mental suffering to which any human being was ever condemned.

“As time passed, and Margaret grew older, her beauty both of face and form approached nearer to perfection than I had foreseen, closely as I watched her.  But neither her mind nor her disposition kept pace with her beauty.  I studied her closely, with the same patient, penetrating observation, which my experience of the world has made it a habit with me to direct on every one with whom I am brought in contact—­I studied her, I say, intently; and found her worthy of nothing, not even of the slave-destiny which I had in store for her.