“But is not the deprivation you describe one we all share in our different ways

“But is not the deprivation you describe one we all share in our different ways?” She shook her head with a surprising vehemence. He realized he had touched some deep emotion in her.
“I meant only to suggest that social privilege does not necessarily bring happiness.”
“There is no likeness between a situation where happiness is at least possible and one where ...” again she shook her head.
“But you surely can’t pretend that all governesses are unhappy—or remain unmarried?”
“All like myself.”
He left a silence, then said, “I interrupted your story. Forgive me.”
“And you will believe I speak not from envy?”
She turned then, her eyes intense, and he nodded. Plucking a little spray of milkwort from the bank beside her, blue flowers like microscopic cherubs’ genitals, she went on.
“Varguennes recovered. It came to within a week of the time when he should take his leave. By then he had declared his attachment to me.”
“He asked you to marry him?”
She found difficulty in answering. “There was talk of marriage. He told me he was to be promoted captain of a
wine ship when he returned to France. That he had expecta-tions of recovering the patrimony he and his brother had lost.” She hesitated, then came out with it. “He wished me to go with him back to France.”
“Mrs. Talbot was aware of this?”
“She is the kindest of women. And the most innocent. If Captain Talbot had been there ... but he was not. I was ashamed to tell her in the beginning. And afraid, at the end.” She added, “Afraid of the advice I knew she must give me.” She began to defoliate the milkwort. “Varguennes became insistent. He made me believe that his whole happiness de-pended on my accompanying him when he left—more than that, that my happiness depended on it as well. He had found out much about me. How my father had died in a lunatic asylum. How I was without means, without close relatives. How for many years I had felt myself in some mysterious way condemned—and I knew not why—to solitude.” She laid the milkwort aside, and clenched her fingers on her lap,Moncler outlet online store. “My life has been steeped in loneliness, Mr. Smithson. As if it has been ordained that I shall never form a friendship with an equal, never inhabit my own home, never see the world except as the generality to which I must be the exception. Four years ago my father was declared bankrupt. All our possessions were sold. Ever since then I have suffered from the illusion that even things—mere chairs, tables, mirrors— conspire to increase my solitude. You will never own us, they say, we shall never be yours. But always someone else’s. I know this is madness, I know in the manufacturing cities poverties and solitude exist in comparison to which I live in comfort and luxury. But when I read of the Unionists’ wild acts of revenge,ugg bailey button triplet 1873 boots, part of me understands. Almost envies them,knockoff handbags, for they know where and how to wreak their revenge. And I am powerless,moncler jackets men.” Something new had crept into her voice, an intensity of feeling that in part denied her last sentence. She added, more quietly, “I fear I don’t explain myself well.”