Free Villette by Charlotte Brontë Page A

glanced in my direction, and slightly curled her short, pretty lip. It might be myself, or it might be my homely mourning-habit that elicited this mark of contempt; more likely, both. A bell rang; her father (I afterwards knew that it was her father) kissed her and returned to land. The packet sailed.
    Foreigners say that it is only English girls who can thus be trusted to travel alone, and deep is their wonder at the daring confidence of English parents and guardians. As for the ›jeunes Miss,‹ by some their intrepidity is pronounced masculine and ›incovenant,‹ others regard them as the passive victims of an educational and theological system which wantonly dispenses with proper ›surveillance.‹ Whether this particular young lady was of the sort that can the most safely be left unwatched, I do not know: or rather did not
then
know; but it soon appeared that the dignity of solitude was not to her taste. She paced the deck once or twice backwards and forwards; she looked with a little sour air of disdain at the flaunting silks and velvets, and the bears which thereon danced attendance, and eventually she approached me and spoke.
    »Are you fond of a sea-voyage?« was her question.
    I explained that my
fondness
for a sea-voyage had yet to undergo the test of experience: I had never made one.
    »Oh how charming!« cried she. »I quite envy you the novelty: first impressions, you know, are so pleasant. Now I have made so many, I quite forget the first: I am quite
blasée
about the sea and all that.«
    I could not help smiling.
    »Why do you laugh at me?« she inquired, with a frank testiness that pleased me better than her other talk.
    »Because you are so young to be
blasée
about anything.«
    »I am seventeen« (a little piqued).
    »You hardly look sixteen. Do you like travelling alone?«
    »Bah! I care nothing about it. I have crossed the Channel ten times, alone; but then I take care never to be long alone: I always make friends.«
    »You will scarcely make many friends this voyage, I think« (glancing at the Watson-group, who were now laughing and making a great deal of noise on deck).
    »Not of those odious men and women,« said she: »such people should be steerage passengers. Are you going to school?«
    »No.«
    »Where are you going?«
    »I have not the least idea – beyond, at least, the Port of Bouemarine.«
    She stared, then carelessly ran on:
    »I am going to school. Oh the number of foreign schools I have been at in my life! And yet I am quite an ignoramus. I know nothing – nothing in the world – I assure you; except that I play and dance beautifully, – and French and German of course I know, to speak; but I can't read or write them very well. Do you know they wanted me to translate a page of an easy German book into English the other day, and I could n't do it. Papa was so mortified: he says it looks as if M. de Bassompierre – my god-papa, who pays all my school-bills – had thrown away all his money. And then, in matters of information – in history, geography, arithmetic, and so on, I am quite a baby; and I write English so badly – such spelling and grammar, they tell me. Into the bargain I have quite forgotten my religion; they call me a Protestant, you know, but really I am not sure whether I am one or not: I don't well know the difference between Romanism and Protestantism. However, I don't in the least care for that. I was a Lutheran once at Bonn – dear Bonn! – charming Bonn! – where there were so many handsome students. Every nice girl in our school had an admirer; they knew our hours for walking out, and almost always passed us on the promenade: ›Schönes Mädchen,‹ we used to hear them say. I was excessively happy at Bonn!«
    »And where are you now?« I inquired.
    »Oh! at –
chose,
« said she.
    Now Miss Ginevra Fanshawe (such was this young person's name) only substituted this word ›
chose
‹ in temporary oblivion of the real name. It was a habit she had: