Something warned Angela not to pursue the subject.

"Now, Angela, I believe that it is usual, on the occasion of the
severance of a scholastic connection, to deliver something in the
nature of a farewell oration. Well, I am not going to do that, but I
want you to listen to a few words."

She did not answer, but, drawing a stool to a corner of the fireplace,
she wiped her eyes and sat down almost at his feet, clasping her knees
with her hands, and gazing rather sadly into the fire.

"You have, dear Angela," he began, "been educated in a somewhat
unusual way, with the result that, after ten years of steady work that
has been always interesting, though sometimes arduous, you have
acquired information denied to the vast majority of your sex, whilst
at the same time you could be put to the blush in many things by a
school-girl of fifteen. For instance, though I firmly believe that you
could at the present moment take a double first at the University,
your knowledge of English literature is almost nil, and your history
of the weakest. All a woman's ordinary accomplishments, such as
drawing, playing, singing, have of necessity been to a great extent
neglected, since I was not able to teach them to you myself, and you
have had to be guided solely by books and by the light of Nature in
giving to them such time as you could spare.

"Your mind, on the other hand, has been daily saturated with the
noblest thoughts of the intellectual giants of two thousand years ago,
and would in that respect be as much in place in a well-educated
Grecian maiden living before the time of Christ as in an English girl