Page:Elizabeth's Pretenders.djvu/16

Rh by a French governess, under Mrs. Shaw's direct supervision. No longer strong enough to teach herself, she watched her child's progress with vigilance, and not wholly without anxiety. Elizabeth was remarkably clever, but she was not easy to manage, and needed very careful handling. In some respects she was more like a boy than a girl; of indomitable courage, turbulent and headstrong, but easily moved when her heart was appealed to, and of unusual constancy in her affections. She sobbed, night after night, when her old nurse left, and her resentment against the successor in this office took the form of cutting to pieces that blameless functionary's best petticoat. Poor Mrs. Shaw, lying on the sofa, and watching the clouds and sunshine chase each other across the little passionate face, beneath its thatch of dark tumbled hair, had many an uneasy moment as regarded the child's future. Her character, she saw, would greatly depend on the influences brought to bear upon it in early youth. Now, her governess was a clever woman, but lacking height or depth of thought. When her pupil began to reason as to cause and effect, to seek for motives, and to argue upon abstract principles of right and wrong, it was clear that mademoiselle would be left floundering. She was an upright woman, stuffed full of knowledge, and with a certain force of will; but the time was drawing near, as Mrs. Shaw saw, when Elizabeth, putting away childish things, would need something more than authority and subjunctive moods; she would require the contact of a strong and thoughtful mind. Without this, there was no saying what she might grow up to be.