It is vain talking; he is prepossessed. Was ever so
unfortunate a creature as I? Who could have fancied or feared such a thing?
Oh, Mary, Mary, what am I to do? what is to become of me? Am I never to
shake off that vindictive, terrible woman?'
Mary said all she could to console me. I was making too much of her. What
was she, after all, more than a governess?--she could not hurt me. I was
not a child no longer--she could not bully me now; and my uncle, though he
might be deceived for a while, would not be long finding her out.
Thus and soforth did good Mary Quince declaim, and at last she did impress
me a little, and I began to think that I had, perhaps, been making too much
of Madame's visit. But still imagination, that instrument and mirror
of prophecy, showed her formidable image always on its surface, with a
terrible moving background of shadows.
In a few minutes there was a knock at my door, and Madame herself entered.
She was in walking costume. There had been a brief clearing of the weather,
and she proposed our making a promenade together.
On seeing Mary Quince she broke into a rapture of compliment and greeting,
and took what Mr.
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