"In truth, no."
"Because she constrains you; because she casts a shadow upon your youth and gayety; in a word, because she prevents you from being yourself."
"Pray, how could you divine that?"
"My dear child, I have already deciphered three thousand human visages, and why should I not have learned to read the soul a little? The lady is your aunt?"
"Yes,—at least I have been told to call her so."
"And your parents?"
"My mother is dead; I never knew her. My father has travelled for the past fifteen years in foreign lands; perhaps I shall never see him. While a mere child I was placed in Miss Hannah More's boarding-school at Bristol. One day we learned that our mistress was a poetic genius, that Dr. Johnson himself had deigned to encourage her. You cannot imagine, Sir Joshua, what a sensation the tidings created among us girls! We all sighed to compose verse—or to recite. It was discovered that I spoke rather better than the others. I swear to you that I was possessed of but one desire,—to appear in costume, to escape from that frightful gray gown and that horrible Quaker bonnet in which we were all hooded. One day I was made to declaim before Mr. Garrick. He wished to give me lessons and make an actress of me. And a few months later I made my début."
"And a genuine triumph it was! I was there."
"It was then that I was informed that I had an aunt, a sister of my mother, and I was forthwith placed in her care, in her guardianship."
"And she has rigorously acquitted herself of the mission which was confided to her."