seduced girl would have appeared to her less guilty, less degraded than
this girl, who, knowing all a man's antecedents, which she evidently
did--bad as he was, set herself deliberately to marry him--a
well-planned, mercenary marriage, by which she might raise herself out
of her low station into a higher, and escape from the drudgery of labor
into ease and splendor.

And yet is not the same thing done every day in society by charming
young ladies, aided and abetted by most prudent, respectable, and
decorous fathers and mothers? Let these, who think themselves so
sinless, cast the first stone at Susan Bennett.

But to Christian, who had never been in society, and did not know the
ways of it, the sensation conveyed was one of absolute repulsion. She
rose.

"I fear, Miss Bennett, that if we continued this conversation forever we
should never agree. It only proves to me more and more the
impossibility of your remaining my daughter's governess. Allow me to
pay you, and then let us part at once."

But the look of actual dismay which came over the girl's face once
more made her pause.

"You send me away with no recommendation--and I shall never get
another situation--and I have hardly a thing to put on--and I'm in debt
awfully. You are cruel to me, Mrs. Grey--you that have been a
governess yourself." And she burst into a passion of hysterical crying.

"What can I do?" said Christian sadly. "I can not keep you----I dare