“Madam, let me go home, I am not fit for this place. Let me return, and I will trouble you no more.”

“I wish to heaven it were possible for you to keep this promise, girl.”

“Let me go home; send for me no more; I will never willingly cross your path again.”

“Nor his?” said the mother, fixing her cold eyes on my face, and pointing to her son.

“Madam, I beseech you, let me go.”

“But I have promised Turner to educate you.”

“Lady, you cannot. Mr. Clarke has taken great care of me, and in some shape I have educated myself.”

“You are a strange girl.”

“I feel strange here. May I go?”

She fell into thought with her eyes on my face, as if it had been a work of marble.