I was a conceited young person, and fond of giving myself airs.

My father was colonel of his regiment, and I thought I had a right to look down on Lydia Brown, whose father was in business, though she wore velvet three inches deep upon her frocks, while mine had no better trimming than worsted braid.

I had spent all my life at school, from the day when my father and mother kissed me for the last time in Miss Sweetman's parlour.

I remember yet my pretty mother's pale tearful face as she looked back at me through the carriage window, and my own paroxysm of despairing tears on the mat when the door was shut.

After that I had a pleasant enough life of it.