He thinks all is well with her; but it was a melancholy, blank, untaught mind, to begin to work on.  Louis would call her life a mournful picture of our civilization.  She has told it all to Jane:  she was of the mechanic class, just above the rank that goes to Sunday-schools; she went to a genteel weekly school, and was taken out pleasuring on Sunday—­no ground-work at all.  An orphan at fifteen, she never again knew tenderness.  Then came dressmaking till her health failed, and she tried service.  She says, Isabel’s soft tones made a paradise for her; but late hours, which she did not feel at the time, wore her out, and Delaford trifled with her.  Always when alone he pretended devotion to her, then flirted with any other who came in his way, and worry and fretting put the finish to her failing health.  She had no spirit to break entirely with him, and even now is pining for one kind word, which he seems to be too hard and selfish to send to her, in answer to a letter of forgiveness that she wrote a fortnight back.  What a wretch he must be!  Jane says, he tried flirting with poor little Charlotte, and that she was a little ‘took up’ with his guitar and his verses; but then, Jane says, ’Charlotte has somewhat at the bottom, and knows better than to heed a man as wasn’t real religious.’  I suppose that is the true difference between Charlotte and Marianne, and even if we looked into Delaford’s history, most likely we should find him another nineteenth-century victim to an artificial life.  At least, I trust that Jane has been the greatest blessing, Marianne herself speaks of her as more than a mother to her; and I believe I told you of the poor girl’s overpowering gratitude, when she found we would not turn her out to die homeless.  We read, and we talk, and Mr. Danvers comes; but I believe dear old Jane does more for her than all.

’Poor Jane! when her task of nursing is over, I do not know what she will turn to.  The grand servants only keep terms with her because Uncle Oliver gave notice that no one should stay in the house who did not show respect to his friend Mrs. Beckett.  It takes all her love for Missus and Master Oliver to make her bear it; and her chief solace is in putting me to bed, and in airing Master Oliver’s shirt and slippers.  You would laugh to hear her compassionating the home minced-pies! and she tells me she would give fifty pounds rather than bring Charlotte here.  My uncle wished grandmamma to manage the house, and she did so at first, but she and the servants did not get on well together; and she said, what I never knew her say before, that she is too old, and so we have an awful dame who rules with a high hand.