"Not one happy hour," she said. "I was left under the care of my grandmother, a proud, cold, cruel woman, who never said a kind word to me, and who grudged me every slice of bread and butter I ate."
She looked at me, still holding the golden locket in her white fingers.
"If I had been like other girls," she said "if I had parents to love me, brothers and sisters, friends or relatives, I should have been different. Believe me, Mr. Ford, there are white slaves in England whose slavery is worse than that of an African child. I was one of them. I think of my youth with a sick shudder; I think of my childhood with horror, and I almost thank Heaven that the tyrant is dead who blighted my life."
Now the real woman was breaking through the mask; her face flushed; her eyes shone.
"I often talk to Lance about it," she said, "this terrible childhood of mine. I was punished for the least offence. I never heard a word of pity or affection. I never saw a look of anything but hate on my grandmother's face. No one was ever pitiful to me; fierce words, fierce blows, complaints of the burden I was; that was all my mother's mother ever gave to me. I need not say that I hated her, and learned to loathe the life I fain would have laid down. Do I tire you, Mr. Ford?"
"On the contrary, I am deeply interested," I replied.
She went on:
"My grandmother was not poor; she was greedy. She had a good income which died with her, and she strongly objected to spend it on me. She paid for my education on the condition that when I could get my own living by teaching I should repay her. Thank Heaven, I did so!"
"Then you were a governess?" I said.
"Yes; I began to get my own living at fifteen. I was tall for my age, and quite capable," she said; "but fifteen is very young, Mr. Ford, for a girl to be thrown on to the world."