"Then don't you see," I said, "that if I am the governess I shall always stay with him?"
Cornelius looked both annoyed and amused.
"There is a wonderful degree of obstinacy in that child," he observed; "she always comes back to her idea of staying with me."
"Because there is nothing she likes half so well," I said, looking up into his face.
"Ah! Mignon! Mignon!" sighed Kate.
"Who is Mignon?" I asked, struck with the name which I heard for the second time.
"It is more than a quarter past ten," was the reply Miss O'Reilly gave me.
I looked at Cornelius, but he showed no wish to detain me; so I submitted and left them.
From that day there was a very marked change in his manner towards me. He was as kind, but by no means so familiar, as he once had been. He was always calling me his little daughter, yet I no sooner availed myself of this imaginary relationship to claim more freedom and tenderness, than he seemed bent on repelling me by the most pertinacious coldness. He received my caresses with chilling indifference, often with an annoyance he could not conceal; he seldom returned them, and when he did so, it was not with the friendliness and warmth to which he had accustomed me for years. When I felt this, and became dispirited and unhappy, Cornelius looked distressed, and, in his anxiety to restore me to cheerfulness, returned to his free and kind manner, in which he persevered until some remark of his sister, or some action of mine too fond and endearing, again rendered him cool and guarded.
I could not imagine then the reason of all this. I could not imagine why, when I showed Cornelius how much I loved him, he looked so wretched; I could not understand why, when Kate once said to him, in her most ominous tones, "Cornelius, that child won't always be a child," he started up and began to walk up and down the room like one distracted. Still less could I make out how, when he seemed more attached to me than ever he had been, more anxious for my welfare, more bent on improving me by every means in his power, he was so provokingly cool and reserved.