in Mrs. Grey's lifetime, had come from that grim nurse, Phillis.

Phillis was not an ordinary woman. The elements of a tragedy where in
her low, broad, observant, and intelligent forehead, her keen black eyes,
and her full-lipped, under-hanging mouth. Though past thirty, she was
still comely, and when she looked pleasant, it was not an unpleasant
face. Yet there lurked in it possibilities of passion that made you
tremble, especially considering that she had the charge of growing
children. You did not wonder at her supremacy in the nursery, but you
wondered very much that any mother could have allowed her to acquire
it.

For the rest, Phillis had entered the family as Letitia's wet-nurse, with
the sad story of most wet-nurses. Her own child having died, she took
to her foster-child with such intensity of devotedness as to save Mrs.
Grey all trouble of loving or looking after the little creature from
henceforward. And so she staid, through many storms and warnings to
leave, but she never did leave--she was too necessary. And, in one
sense, Phillis did her duty. Physically, no children could be better
cared for than the little Greys. They were always well washed, well
clad, and, in a certain external sense, well managed. The "rod in
pickle," which Phillis always kept in the nursery, maintained a form of
outward discipline and even manners, so far as Phillis knew what
manners meant; morals too, in Phillis's style of morality. Beyond that
Phillis's own will--strong and obstinate as it was--made laws for itself,
which the children were obliged to obey. They rebelled; sometimes
they actually hated her, and yet she had great influence over them--the
earliest and closest influence they had ever known. Besides, the
struggle had only begun when they were old enough to have some
sense of the difference between justice and injustice, submission