CHAPTER X.
THE EDUCATION OF CONSTANCE'S MIND.
Meanwhile, Constance Vernon grew up in womanhood and beauty.

All around her contributed to feed that stern remembrance which her father's dying words had bequeathed.

Naturally proud, quick, susceptible, she felt slights, often merely incidental, with a deep and brooding resentment.
The forlorn and dependent girl could not, indeed, fail to meet with many bitter proofs that her situation was not forgotten by a world in which prosperity and station are the cardinal virtues.

Many a loud whisper, many an intentional "aside," reached her haughty ear, and coloured her pale cheek.

Such accidents increased her early-formed asperity of thought; chilled the gushing flood of her young affections; and sharpened, with a relentless edge, her bitter and caustic hatred to a society she deemed at once insolent and worthless.