Of course, all the chances were that de Barral should have fallen upon a
perfectly harmless, naive, usual, inefficient specimen of respectable
governess for his daughter; or on a commonplace silly adventuress who
would have tried, say, to marry him or work some other sort of common
mischief in a small way. Or again he might have chanced on a model of
all the virtues, or the repository of all knowledge, or anything equally
harmless, conventional, and middle class. All calculations were in his
favour; but, chance being incalculable, he fell upon an individuality
whom it is much easier to define by opprobrious names than to classify in
a calm and scientific spirit--but an individuality certainly, and a
temperament as well. Rare? No. There is a certain amount of what I
would politely call unscrupulousness in all of us. Think for instance of
the excellent Mrs. Fyne, who herself, and in the bosom of her family,
resembled a governess of a conventional type. Only, her mental excesses
were theoretical, hedged in by so much humane feeling and conventional
reserves, that they amounted to no more than mere libertinage of thought;
whereas the other woman, the governess of Flora de Barral, was, as you
may have noticed, severely practical--terribly practical.
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