, »and come and live with us. Papa would
give you far more than Madame Beck gives you.«
    Mr. Home himself offered me a handsome sum - thrice my present salary - if I
would accept the office of companion to his daughter. I declined. I think I
should have declined had I been poorer than I was, and with scantier fund of
resource, more stinted narrowness of future prospect. I had not that vocation. I
could teach; I could give lessons; but to be either a private governess or a
companion was unnatural to me. Rather than fill the former post in any great
house, I would deliberately have taken a housemaid's place, bought a strong pair
of gloves, swept bedrooms and staircases, and cleaned stoves and locks, in peace
and independence. Rather than be a companion, I would have made shirts, and
starved.
    I was no bright lady's shadow - not Miss de Bassompierre's. Overcast enough
it was my nature often to be; of a subdued habit I was: but the dimness and
depression must both be voluntary - such as kept me docile at my desk, in the
midst of my now well-accustomed pupils in Madame Beck's first classe; or alone,
at my own bedside, in her dormitory, or in the alley and seat which were called
mine, in her garden: my qualifications were not convertible, not adaptable; they
could not be made the foil of any gem, the adjunct of any beauty, the appendage
of any greatness in Christendom. Madame Beck and I, without assimilating,
understood each other well. I was not her companion, nor her children's
governess; she left me free: she tied me to nothing - not to herself - not even
to her interests: once, when she had for a fortnight been called from home by a
near relation's illness, and on her return, all anxious and full of care about
her establishment, lest something in her absence should have gone wrong -
finding that matters had proceeded much as usual, and that there was no evidence
of glaring neglect - she made each of the teachers a present, in acknowledgement
of steadiness. To my bedside she came at twelve o'clock at night, and told me
she had no present for me. »I must make fidelity advantageous to the St Pierre,«
said she; »if I attempt to make it advantageous to you, there will arise
misunderstanding between us - perhaps separation. One thing, however, I can do
to please you - leave you alone
