And one
of them, by a strange twist of Fate, was I.
"Hard times and higher taxes were beginning to take their toll on
Bryan, and I felt useless enough in his house. So I determined to seek
employment, and a place of my own, wherever I might find them. For I
had not yet learned that my place was here, and that the world of men
held nothing for me. Stubbornly I hoped, and stubbornly I fell into
the trap.
"As much as perhaps I should have known better, I solicited for, and
was given the job of governess to young Stephen Purceville, aged then
seven years. He was a hard and abrasive lad, his mother dead and gone
years past. Yes, Mary, you begin to see how life repeats, and how I
was laid bare for the final sting. I loved the boy, hard as it was
sometimes. There was something in him, a brooding hunger of the eyes,
which endeared him to me for all his excesses and bursts of temper.
And if the truth be told, I saw the same hunger and restless need in
the aggressive coldness, the outward ferocity of his father.
"Fool, fool, fool!" she cursed herself.
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