"Miss Fleming? I am sure it is. You are exactly the sort of a girl I expected."
Then she sat down and looked at her comfortably.
"I am the wife of your late guardian's nephew—Mr. Gabriel Cassilis. You have never met him yet; but I hope you will very soon make his acquaintance."
"Thank you," said Phillis simply.
"We used to think, until Mr. Dyson died and his preposterous will was read, that his eccentric behaviour was partly your fault. But when we found that he had left you nothing, of course we felt that we had done you an involuntary wrong. And the will was made when you were a mere child, and could have no voice or wish in the matter."
"I had plenty of money," said Phillis; "why should poor Mr. Dyson want to leave me any more?"
Quite untaught. As if any one could have too much money!
"Forty thousand pounds a year! and all going to Female education. Not respectable Female education. If it had been left to Girton College, or even to finding bread-and-butter, with the Catechism and Contentment, for charity girls in poke bonnets, it would have been less dreadful. But to bring up young ladies as you were brought up, my poor Miss Fleming——"
"Am I not respectable?" asked Phillis, as humbly as a West Indian nigger before emancipation asking if he was not a man and a brother.
"My dear child, I hear you cannot even read and write."