I’m afraid it is a come down for a finisher like you to condescend to my little Babie, but she is really worth teaching, and I would say, make your own terms, but that I am afraid you would not ask enough.  Please let it be one hundred and fifty pounds, there’s a good Mary!  I think you would come if you knew what a relief it would be.  Ever since that terrible August, two years and a half ago, I have felt as if I were drifting in an endless mist, with all the children depending on me, and nobody to take my hand and lead me.  You are one of the straws I grasp at.  Not very complimentary after all, but when I thought of the strong, warm, guiding hands that are gone, I could not put it otherwise.  Do, Mary, come, I do need you so.

“Your affectionate
“C.  O. BROWNLOW.”

“May I see it?” asked David.

“If you will; but I don’t think it will do you any good.  My poor Carey!”

“Few women would have written such a letter in all the first flush of wealth.”

“No; there’s great sweetness and humility and generosity in it, dear child.”

“It changes the face of affairs.”

“I’m engaged to you.”

“Nonsense!  As if that would stand in the way.  Besides, she will be at Kenminster till Easter.  You are not hesitating, Mary?”

“I don’t think I am, and yet I believe I ought to do so.”

“You are not imagining that I—-”

“I was not thinking of you; but I am not certain that it would not be better for our old friendship if I did not accept the part poor Carey proposes to me.  I might make myself more disagreeable than could be endured by forty thousand a year.”

“You do yourself and her equal injustice.”

“I shall settle nothing till I have seen her.”

“Then you will be fixed,” he said, in a tone of conviction.

So she expected, though believing that it would be the ruin of her pleasant old friendship.  Her nineteen years of governess-ship had shown her more of the shady side of high life than was known to her brother or her friend.  She knew that, whatever the owner may be at the outset, it is the tendency of wealth and power to lead to arbitrariness and impatience of contradiction and censure, and to exact approval and adulation.  Even if Caroline Brownlow’s own nature should, at five-and-thirty, be too much confirmed in sweetness and generosity to succumb to such temptation, her children would only too probably resent any counter-influence, and set themselves against their mother’s friend, and guide, under the title of governess.  Moreover, Mary was too clear-sighted not to feel that there was a lack in the Brownlow household of what alone could give her confidence in the charming qualities of its mistress.  Yet she knew that her brother would never forgive her for refusing, and that she should hardly forgive herself for following—-not so much her better, as her more prudent, judgment.  For she was infinitely touched