CHAPTER XII.

Miss Starke was one of those ladies who pass their lives in the direst of
all civil strife,--war with their servants. She looked upon the members
of that class as the unrelenting and sleepless enemies of the unfortunate
householders condemned to employ them. She thought they ate and drank to
their villanous utmost, in order to ruin their benefactors; that they
lived in one constant conspiracy with one another and the tradesmen, the
object of which was to cheat and pilfer. Miss Starke was a miserable
woman. As she had no relations or friends who cared enough for her to
share her solitary struggle against her domestic foes; and her income,
though easy, was an annuity that died with herself, thereby reducing
various nephews, nieces, or cousins to the strict bounds of a natural
affection,--that did not exist; and as she felt the want of some friendly
face amidst this world of distrust and hate,--so she had tried the
resource of venal companions. But the venal companions had never stayed
long, either they disliked Miss Starke, or Miss Starke disliked them.
Therefore the poor woman had resolved upon bringing up some little girl,
whose heart, as she said to herself, would be fresh and uncorrupted, and
from whom she might expect gratitude. She had been contented, on the
whole, with Helen, and had meant to keep that child in her house as long
as she (Miss Starke) remained upon the earth,--perhaps some thirty years
longer; and then, having carefully secluded her from marriage and other
friendship, to leave her nothing but the regret of having lost so kind a
benefactress. Conformably with this notion, and in order to secure the
affections of the child, Miss Starke had relaxed the frigid austerity
natural to her manner and mode of thought, and been kind to Helen in an
iron way. She had neither slapped nor pinched her, neither had she
starved. She had allowed her to see Leonard, according to the agreement