The elder lady looked up with a long, deep-drawn sigh.
"I have never been so completely puzzled in all my life," she replied. "My dear Pauline, you are the strangest mixture of ignorance and knowledge that I have ever met. You know a great deal, but it is all of the wrong kind; you ought to unlearn all that you have learned."
"You admit then that I know something."
"Yes; but it would be almost better, perhaps, if you did not. I will tell you how I feel, Pauline. I know nothing of building, but I feel as though I had been placed before a heap of marble, porphyry, and granite, of wood, glass, and iron, and then told from those materials to shape a magnificent palace. I am at a loss what to do."
Miss Darrell laughed with the glee of a child. Her governess, repressing her surprise, continued:
"You know more in some respects than most educated women; in other and equally essential matters you know less than a child. You speak French fluently, perfectly; you have read a large number of books in the French language—good, bad, and indifferent, it appears to me; yet you have no more idea of French grammar or of the idiom or construction of the language than a child."
"That, indeed, I have not; I consider grammar the most stupid of all human inventions."
Miss Hastings offered no comment.
"Again," she continued, "you speak good English, but your spelling is bad, and your writing worse. You are better acquainted with English literature than I am—that is, you have read more. You have read indiscriminately; even the titles of some of the books you have read are not admissible."
The dark eyes flashed, and the pale, grand face was stirred as though by some sudden emotion.