about it. You must set me a task, then."

This I undertook with more pleasure than I dared to show. Every day she
brought me the appointed exercise, written with a steadily improving
hand. To my surprise, I never found a single error in the spelling. Of
course, when, advancing a step in the process, I made her write from my
dictation, she did make blunders, but not so many as I had expected; and
she seldom repeated one after correction.

This new association gave me many opportunities of doing more for her
than merely teaching her to spell. We talked about what she copied; and
I had to explain. I also told her about the writers. Soon she expressed
a desire to know something of figures. We commenced arithmetic. I
proposed geometry along with it, and found the latter especially fitted
to her powers. One by one we included several other necessary branches;
and ere long I had four around the schoolroom table--equally my pupils.
Whether the attempts previously made to instruct her had been
insufficient or misdirected, or whether her intellectual powers had
commenced a fresh growth, I could not tell; but I leaned to the latter
conclusion, especially after I began to observe that her peculiar
remarks had become modified in form, though without losing any of their
originality. The unearthliness of her beauty likewise disappeared, a
slight colour displacing the almost marbly whiteness of her cheek.

Long before Lady Alice had made this progress, my nightly struggles
began to diminish in violence. They had now entirely ceased. The
temptation had left me. I felt certain that for weeks she had never
walked in her sleep. She was beyond my power, and I was glad of it.

I was, of course, most careful of my behaviour during all this period. I