Jean and Angus were my nearest and dearest.

Jean was of good blood and a stanch gentlewoman, quite sufficiently educated to be my companion as she had been my early governess.
It was Jean who told Angus that I was giving myself too entirely to the study of ancient books and the history of centuries gone by.
"She is living to-day, and she must not pass through this life without gathering anything from it." "This life," she put it, as if I had passed through others before, and might pass through others again.

That was always her way of speaking, and she seemed quite unconscious of any unusualness in it.
"You are a wise woman, Jean," Angus said, looking long at her grave face.

"A wise woman." He wrote to the London book-shops for the best modern books, and I began to read them.

I felt at first as if they plunged me into a world I did not understand, and many of them I could not endure.