"I was just like your father, my dear. I never did no manner of harm to
those people. They used to think I thought myself better blood nor they
were, but I never thought no such thing, I assure you. Only when they
turned nasty after my marriage I made up my mind--just as your father
did--as Alma should marry a bigger husband nor any of them, even if he
wasn't worth a dime and 'adn't a 'air on 'is 'ead."
But even these revelations about herself were less humiliating than her
sympathy with me, which implied that I was not fitted to be mistress of
a noble house--how could it be expected of me?--whereas Alma was just as
if she had been born to it, and therefore it was lucky for me that I had
her there to show me how to do things.
"Alma's gotten such _ton!_ Such distangy manners!" she would say.
The effect of all this was to make me feel, as I had never felt before,
the intolerable nature of the yoke I was living under. When I looked
into the future and saw nothing before me but years of this ignoble
bondage, I told myself that nothing--no sacrament or contract, no law of
church or state--could make me endure it.
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