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you ought to know of your own history all I know. It is very
little. Next to nothing.’
‘Dear guardian,’ I replied, ‘when you spoke to me before
on that subject—‘
‘But since then,’ he gravely interposed, anticipating what
I meant to say, ‘I have reflected that your having anything
to ask me, and my having anything to tell you, are different
considerations, Esther. It is perhaps my duty to impart to
you the little I know.’
‘If you think so, guardian, it is right.’
‘I think so,’ he returned very gently, and kindly, and very
distinctly. ‘My dear, I think so now. If any real disadvan-
tage can attach to your position in the mind of any man or
woman worth a thought, it is right that you at least of all the
world should not magnify it to yourself by having vague im-
pressions of its nature.’
I sat down and said after a little effort to be as calm as I
ought to be, ‘One of my earliest remembrances, guardian, is
of these words: ‘Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and
you were hers. The time will come, and soon enough, when
you will understand this better, and will feel it too, as no one
save a woman can.’’ I had covered my face with my hands in
repeating the words, but I took them away now with a better
kind of shame, I hope, and told him that to him I owed the
blessing that I had from my childhood to that hour never,
never, never felt it. He put up his hand as if to stop me. I well
knew that he was never to be thanked, and said no more.
‘Nine years, my dear,’ he said after thinking for a little
while, ‘have passed since I received a letter from a lady liv-

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