Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 127: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

110 REYNOLDS’ WORKS as I passed her on the stairs she turned up her nose, muttering something about ‘a beggarly upstart.’ I at once told her that I had not the slightest doubt she was precisely what she had ‘dared to call me, and white with rage, she hurried away. I was now perfectly triumphant. I felt glowing within me a spirit such as I had never known before, and the consciousness that I possessed it made me happy. I sud- denly felt myself above all petty tyrannies, and totally in- dependent of my tyrants. I was therefore encouraged to prosecute the warfare against the servants, and when, that very same day, an impertinent minx of a housemaid refused to do something I bade her, I bestowed upon her such a sound box on the ears that she was as much dismayed as hurt. She did not any longer refuse to follow my orders, and during all the rest of the time I was in Sir John Marston’s family, | experienced no overt impertinence on the part of the domestics. | “The effect which all these various proceedings produced was perfectly astonishing; the treatment I subsequently experienced was widely different from that I had before known. I was left to manage the children as I thought fit, and the domestics obeyed my orders. But still I was resolved to take the earliest opportunity of quitting a situa- tion which I disliked and a family that I detested. I se- cretly made inquiries if other English families living in Havre required a governess, but could hear of nothing satis- factory. At length I resolved to give Sir John Marston notice to leave him, and wend my way back to England. Thereupon he gave me to understand that I was bound to him by those who had the power to bind me, until I should attain the age of twenty-one. It only wanted three months of that period, and I therefore determined to await it patiently. But still | wondered who the persons could be that exercised this invisible but powerful influence over my destinies. ‘“ About two months after that conversation with Sir John Marston the family removed from Havre to Paris, and we took up our abode at a hotel, the baronet alleging that he purposed to look out for a suitable residence, as he meant to fix himself permanently, or at all events for some time, in the French capital. I cared nothing about his arrangements, looking forward to the end of another month Eomicbooks:com ——E————————EE——C