‘Yes, you can do much in developing her faculties, as well as in sheltering her from being thrust into positions to which she would be unequal. You do so already. Though her weakness was apparent to me the first week I was in the house, yet, owing to your kind guardianship, I never perceived its extent till you were absent. I could not have imagined so much tact and vigilance could have been unconscious. Nay, dear child, it is no cause for tears. Her life may perhaps be happier than that of many of more complete intellect.’
‘I ought not to cry,’ owned Phœbe, the tears quietly flowing all the time. ‘Such people cannot do wrong in the same way as we can.’
‘Ah! Phœbe, till we come to the infinite, how shall the finite pronounce what is wrong?’
Phœbe did not understand, but felt that she was not in Miss Charlecote’s atmosphere, and from the heavenly, ‘from him to whom little is given, little will be required,’ came to the earthly, and said, imploring, ‘And you will never be hard on her again!’
‘I trust I have not been hard on her. I shall task her less, and only endeavour to give her habits of quiet occupation, and make her manners retiring. It was this relaxation of discipline, together with Bertha’s sad habit of teasing, which was intolerable in your absence, that induced me to explain to her the state of the case.’
‘How shocked she must have been.’
‘Not quite as you were. Her first remark was that it was as if she were next in age to you.’
‘She is not old enough to understand.’
The governess shook her head. ‘Nay, when I found her teasing again, she told me it was a psychological experiment. Little monkey, she laid hold of some books of mine, and will never rest till she has come to some conclusion as to what is wanting in Maria.’
‘Too young to feel what it means,’ repeated Phœbe.