"I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night," she said,
when she had examined me a while. "I wonder what thoughts are busy
in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the
fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern:
just as little sympathetic communion passing between you and them as
if they were really mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual
substance."
"I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad."
"Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with
whispers of the future?"
"Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my
earnings to set up a school some day in a little house rented by
myself."
"A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on: and sitting in that
window-seat (you see I know your habits )--"
"You have learned them from the servants."
"Ah! you think yourself sharp. Well, perhaps I have: to speak
truth, I have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Poole--"
I started to my feet when I heard the name.
"You have--have you?" thought I; "there is diablerie in the business
after all, then!"
"Don't be alarmed," continued the strange being; "she's a safe hand
is Mrs. Poole: close and quiet; any one may repose confidence in
her. But, as I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you
think of nothing but your future school? Have you no present
interest in any of the company who occupy the sofas and chairs
before you? Is there not one face you study? one figure whose
movements you follow with at least curiosity?"
"I like to observe all the faces and all the figures."
"But do you never single one from the rest--or it may be, two?"
"I do frequently; when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling
a tale: it amuses me to watch them."
"What tale do you like best to hear?"
"Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme--
courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe--marriage."
"And do you like that monotonous theme?"
"Positively, I don't care about it: it is nothing to me."
"Nothing to you? When a lady, young and full of life and health,
charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank and fortune,
sits and smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you--"