he means to get a fellowship, to take pupils, to
set one of his brothers going, to be everything that is most remarkable. The
letter is full of fun - just like him. He says, Tell mother she has put out an
advertisement for a jolly good hard-working son, in time to hinder me from
taking ship; and I offer myself for the place. The letter came on Friday. I
never saw my husband so much moved by anything since Rex was born. It seemed a
gain to balance our loss.«
    This letter, in fact, was what had helped both Mrs. Gascoigne and Anna to
show Gwendolen an unmixed kindliness; and she herself felt very amiably about
it, smiling at Anna and pinching her chin as much as to say, »Nothing is wrong
with you now, is it?« She had no gratuitously ill-natured feeling, or egoistic
pleasure in making men miserable. She only had an intense objection to their
making her miserable.
    But when the talk turned on furniture for the cottage, Gwendolen was not
roused to show even a languid interest. She thought that she had done as much as
could be expected of her this morning, and indeed felt at an heroic pitch in
keeping to herself the struggle that was going on within her. The recoil of her
mind from the only definite prospect allowed her, was stronger than even she had
imagined beforehand. The idea of presenting herself before Mrs. Mompert in the
first instance, to be approved or disapproved, came as pressure on an already
painful bruise: even as a governess, it appeared she was to be tested and was
liable to rejection. After she had done herself the violence to accept the
bishop and his wife, they were still to consider whether they would accept her;
it was at her peril that she was to look, speak, or be silent. And even when she
had entered on her dismal task of self-constraint in the society of three girls
whom she was bound incessantly to edify, the same process of inspection was to
go on: there was always to be Mrs. Mompert's supervision; always something or
other would be expected of her to which she had not the slightest inclination;
and perhaps the bishop would examine her on serious topics. Gwendolen, lately
used to the social successes of a handsome girl, whose lively venturesomeness of
talk has the effect of wit, and who six weeks before would have pitied the
dulness of the bishop rather than have been embarrassed by him, saw the life
before her as an entrance into a penitentiary. Wild