Tutors were engaged to prepare her for the position she might one day enjoy through her dead uncle's will. They did not remain long. She showed either marked incapacity to acquire the slightest veneer of culture—else it was pure wilfulness.
The only gleams of relief she had were on the occasions when Jerry visited the family. Whenever they could avoid Mrs. Chichester's watchful eyes they would chat and laugh and play like children. She could not understand him—he was always discovering new traits in her. They became great friends.
Her letters to her father were, at first, very bitter, regarding her treatment by the family. Indeed so resentful did they become that her father wrote to her in reply urging her, if she was so unhappy, to at once return to him on the next steamer. But she did NOT. Little by little the letters softened. Occasionally, toward the end of that first month they seemed almost contented. Her father marvelled at the cause.
The month she had promised to stay was drawing to an end. But one more day remained. It was to be a memorable one for Peg.
Jerry had endeavoured at various times to encourage her to study. He would question her, and chide her and try to stimulate her. One day he gave her a large, handsomely-bound volume and asked her to read it at odd times and he would examine her in it when she had mastered its contents. She opened it wonderingly and found it to be "Love Stories of the World."
It became Peg's treasure. She kept it hidden from every one in the house. She made a cover for it out of a piece of cloth so that no one could see the ornate binding. She would read it at night in her room, by day out in the fields or by the sea. But her favourite time and place was in the living-room, every evening after dinner. She would surround herself with books—a geography, a history of England, a huge atlas, a treatise on simple arithmetic and put the great book in the centre; making of it an island—the fount of knowledge. Then she would devour it intently until some one disturbed her. The moment she heard anyone coming she would cover it up quickly with the other books and pretend to be studying.
The book was a revelation to her. It gave all her imagination full play. Through its pages treaded a stately procession of Kings and Queens—Wagnerian heroes and heroines: Shakespearian creations, melodious in verse; and countless others. It was indeed a treasure-house. It took her back to the lives and loves of the illustrious and passionate dead, and it brought her for the first time to the great fount of poetry and genius.
Life began to take on a different aspect to her.
All her rebellious spirit would soften under the spell of her imagination; and again all her dauntless spirit would assert itself under the petty humiliations the Chichester family frequently inflicted upon her.
Next to Mrs. Chichester she saw Alaric the most.