"Did you never have a governess, do you mean? What a fortunate person!"
"Never."
"I am not sure that the other alternative, going to school, is not worse."
"I never went to school."
"Is it possible? Do you mean (raising herself, and opening her eyes) that you have never had any education at all?"
"I suppose not," answers Esther, reluctantly; regretting having made an admission which evidently tells so much against her.
"How very odd!"
"What's very odd?" asks her brother, who, with St. John, lounges in from the billiard-room, where they have been knocking the balls about and getting tired of one another.
"Miss Craven has just been telling us that she has had no education," answers Constance, in her even voice—perhaps not sorry of an opportunity to let Gerard know his protégée's deficiencies. "I am sure (civilly) that we should never have found it out if she had not told us."
The protégée droops her black eyes in mortification over her book, in which she has already found several things that amuse, several things that startle, and several other things that profoundly puzzle her innocent mind.