Christian's pity changed into something very like disgust. Many a poor, seduced girl would have appeared to her less guilty, less degraded than this girl, who, knowing all a man's antecedents, which she evidently did—bad as he was, set herself deliberately to marry him—a well-planned, mercenary marriage, by which she might raise herself out of her low station into a higher, and escape from the drudgery of labor into ease and splendor.
And yet is not the same thing done every day in society by charming young ladies, aided and abetted by most prudent, respectable, and decorous fathers and mothers? Let these, who think themselves so sinless, cast the first stone at Susan Bennett.
But to Christian, who had never been in society, and did not know the ways of it, the sensation conveyed was one of absolute repulsion. She rose.
"I fear, Miss Bennett, that if we continued this conversation forever we should never agree. It only proves to me more and more the impossibility of your remaining my daughter's governess. Allow me to pay you, and then let us part at once."
But the look of actual dismay which came over the girl's face once more made her pause.
"You send me away with no recommendation—and I shall never get another situation—and I have hardly a thing to put on—and I'm in debt awfully. You are cruel to me, Mrs. Grey—you that have been a governess yourself." And she burst into a passion of hysterical crying.
"What can I do?" said Christian sadly. "I can not keep you——I dare not. And it is equally true that I dare not recommend you. If I could find any thing else—not with children—something you really could do, and which would take you away from this town—"
"I'd go any where——do any thing to get my bread, for it comes to that. If I went home and told father this—if he found out why I had lost my situation, he'd turn me out of doors. And except this check, which is owed nearly all, I haven't one halfpenny—I really haven't. Mrs. Grey. It's all very well for you to talk—you in your fine house and comfortable clothes; but you don't know what it is to be shabby, cold, miserable. You don't know what it is to be in dread of starving."
"I do," said Christian, solemnly. It was true.
The shudder which came over her at thought of these remembered days obliterated every feeling about the girl except the desire to help her, blameworthy though she was, in some way that could not possibly injure any one else.