"My father passed the last ten years of his life in a prison. He died
in that prison, and within those dingy smoke-blackened walls my
childhood was spent--a joyless childhood, without a hope, without a
dream, haunted perpetually by the dark phantom, Poverty. I emerged from
that prison to enter a new one, in the shape of a West-end boarding-
school, where I became the drudge and scape-goat of rich citizens'
daughters, heiresses presumptive to the scrapings of tallow-chandlers
and coal-merchants, linen-drapers and cheesemongers. For six years I
endured my fate patiently, uncomplainingly. Not one creature amongst
that large household loved me, or cared for me, or thought whether I
was happy or miserable.
"I worked like a slave. I rose early, and went to bed late, giving my
youth, my health, my beauty--you will smile, perhaps, Mr. Carrington,
but in those days I was accounted a handsome woman--in exchange for
what? My daily bread, and the education which was to enable me to earn
a livelihood hereafter. Some distant relations undertook to clothe me;
and I was dressed in those days about as shabbily as I have been
dressed ever since. In all my life, I never knew the innocent pleasure
which every woman feels in the possession of handsome clothes.
"At eighteen, I left the boarding-school to go on the Continent, where
I was to fill a situation which had been procured for me.
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