’I’ll answer as well as I can.  I have decided to give up romancing because I cannot think of any more that pleases me.  I have been trying at Knollsea for a fortnight, and it is no use.  I will never be a governess again:  I would rather be a servant.  If I am a schoolmistress I shall be entirely free from all contact with the great, which is what I desire, for I hate them, and am getting almost as revolutionary as Sol.  Father, I cannot endure this kind of existence any longer; I sleep at night as if I had committed a murder:  I start up and see processions of people, audiences, battalions of lovers obtained under false pretences—­all denouncing me with the finger of ridicule.  Mother’s suggestion about my marrying I followed out as far as dogged resolution would carry me, but during my journey here I have broken down; for I don’t want to marry a second time among people who would regard me as an upstart or intruder.  I am sick of ambition.  My only longing now is to fly from society altogether, and go to any hovel on earth where I could be at peace.’

‘What—­has anybody been insulting you?’ said Mrs. Chickerel.

’Yes; or rather I sometimes think he may have:  that is, if a proposal of marriage is only removed from being a proposal of a very different kind by an accident.’

‘A proposal of marriage can never be an insult,’ her mother returned.

‘I think otherwise,’ said Ethelberta.

‘So do I,’ said her father.

‘Unless the man was beneath you, and I don’t suppose he was that,’ added Mrs. Chickerel.

’You are quite right; he was not that.  But we will not talk of this branch of the subject.  By far the most serious concern with me is that I ought to do some good by marriage, or by heroic performance of some kind; while going back to give the rudiments of education to remote hamleteers will do none of you any good whatever.’

‘Never you mind us,’ said her father; ‘mind yourself.’

’I shall hardly be minding myself either, in your opinion, by doing that,’ said Ethelberta dryly.  ’But it will be more tolerable than what I am doing now.  Georgina, and Myrtle, and Emmeline, and Joey will not get the education I intended for them; but that must go, I suppose.’

‘How full of vagaries you are,’ said her mother.  ’Why won’t it do to continue as you are?  No sooner have I learnt up your schemes, and got enough used to ’em to see something in ’em, than you must needs bewilder me again by starting some fresh one, so that my mind gets no rest at all.’

Ethelberta too keenly felt the justice of this remark, querulous as it was, to care to defend herself.  It was hopeless to attempt to explain to her mother that the oscillations of her mind might arise as naturally from the perfection of its balance, like those of a logan-stone, as from inherent lightness; and such an explanation, however comforting to its subject, was little better than none to simple hearts who only could look to tangible outcrops.