Genevieve was blushing intensely, but taking courage she bestowed a shower of ardent embraces and expressions of gratitude, mingled with excuses for her precaution. ‘Oh! it was so very kind in Miss Sophy,’ she said; ‘it would be such a comfort to remember, she had feared she too was angry with her.’
‘Angry? oh, no!’ cried Sophy, her heart quite unlocked; ‘but the more I loved and admired, the more I could not speak. And if they drive you to be a governess? If you had a situation like what we read of?’
‘Perhaps I shall not,’ said Genevieve, laughing. ‘Every one has been so good to me hitherto! And then I am not reduced from anything grander. I shall always have the children, you know.’
‘How I should hate them!’ quoth Sophy.
‘They are my pleasure. Besides I have always thought it a blessing that my business in life, though so humble, should be what may do direct good. If only I do not set them a bad example, or teach them any harm.’
‘Not much danger of that,’ said Sophy, smiling. ‘Well, I can’t believe it will be your lot all your life. You will find some one who will know how to love you.’
‘No,’ said Genevieve, ‘I am not in a position for marriage—grandmamma has often told me so!’
‘Things sometimes happen,’ pursued Sophy. ‘Mamma said if Gilbert had been older, or even if—if he had been in earnest and steady enough to work for you in India, then it might—And surely if Gilbert could care for you—people higher and deeper than he would like you better still.’
‘Hush,’ said Genevieve; ‘they would only see the objections more strongly. No, do not put these things in my head. I know that unless a teacher hold her business as her mission, and put all other schemes out of her mind, she will work with an absent, distracted, half-hearted attention, and fail of the task that the good God has committed to her.’
‘Then you would never even wish—’