So Herminia gave way. Sadly against her will she gave way. One
morning in early March, she absented herself from her place in the
class-room without even taking leave of her beloved schoolgirls,
whom she had tried so hard unobtrusively to train up towards a
rational understanding of the universe around them, and sat down to
write a final letter of farewell to poor straight-laced kind-hearted
Miss Smith-Waters. She sat down to it with a sigh; for Miss
Smith-Waters, though her outlook upon the cosmos was through one
narrow chink, was a good soul up to her lights, and had been really
fond and proud of Herminia. She had rather shown her off, indeed, as
a social trump card to the hesitating parent,--"This is our second
mistress, Miss Barton; you know her father, perhaps; such an
excellent man, the Dean of Dunwich." And now, Herminia sat down with
a heavy heart, thinking to herself what a stab of pain the avowal
she had to make would send throbbing through that gentle old breast,
and how absolutely incapable dear Miss Smith-Waters could be of ever
appreciating the conscientious reasons which had led her,
Iphigenia-like, to her self-imposed sacrifice.
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