My recovery advanced in the most favourable manner. The attention and
kindness of my protector were incessant, and the rest caught the spirit
from his example. The old woman who superintended the household still
retained her animosity. She considered me as the cause of the expulsion
of Gines from the fraternity. Gines had been the object of her
particular partiality; and, zealous as she was for the public concern,
she thought an old and experienced sinner for a raw probationer but an
ill exchange. Add to which, that her habits inclined her to moroseness
and discontent, and that persons of her complexion seem unable to exist
without some object upon which to pour out the superfluity of their
gall. She lost no opportunity, upon the most trifling occasion, of
displaying her animosity; and ever and anon eyed me with a furious
glance of canine hunger for my destruction. Nothing was more evidently
mortifying to her, than the procrastination of her malice; nor could she
bear to think that a fierceness so gigantic and uncontrollable should
show itself in nothing more terrific than the pigmy spite of a
chambermaid. For myself, I had been accustomed to the warfare of
formidable adversaries, and the encounter of alarming dangers; and what
I saw of her spleen had not power sufficient to disturb my tranquillity.

As I recovered, I told my story, except so far as related to the
detection of Mr. Falkland's eventful secret, to my protector. That
particular I could not, as yet, prevail upon myself to disclose, even in
a situation like this, which seemed to preclude the possibility of its
being made use of to the disadvantage of my persecutor. My present
auditor however, whose habits of thinking were extremely opposite to
those of Mr. Forester, did not, from the obscurity which flowed from
this reserve, deduce any unfavourable conclusion. His penetration was
such, as to afford little room for an impostor to hope to mislead him by