I looked at myself this morning, as I was plaiting my hair before the glass--you know how seldom one gets a turn at the glass in the blue room--and I saw a dark, ugly, evil-minded-looking creature, whose face frightened me.

I have been getting wicked and ugly ever since I was a child.

An aquiline nose and black eyes will not make a woman a beauty; she wants happiness, and hope, and love, and all manner of things that I have never known, before she can be pretty." "I have seen a beautiful woman sweeping a crossing," said Charlotte doubtfully.
"Yes, but what sort of beauty was it ?--a beauty that made you shudder.
Don't talk about these things, Charlotte; you only encourage me to be bitter and discontented.

I daresay I ought to be very happy, when I remember that I have dinner every day, and shoes and stockings, and a bed to lie down upon at night; and I am happier, now that I work for my living, than I was in the old time, when my cousin was always grumbling about her unpaid bills.

But my life is very dreary and empty; and when I look forward to the future, it seems like looking out upon some level plain that leads nowhere, but across which I must tramp on for ever and ever, until I drop down and die." It was something in this fashion that Miss Paget talked, as she sat in the garden with Charlotte Halliday at the close of the half-year.