“ This , however, I do remember: quiet Lucy Snowe tasted nothing of my grace.”

“As little of your cruelty.”

“Why, had I been Nero himself, I could not have tormented a being inoffensive as a shadow.”

I smiled; but I also hushed a groan. Oh!⁠—I just wished he would let me alone⁠—cease allusion to me. These epithets⁠—these attributes I put from me. His “quiet Lucy Snowe,” his “inoffensive shadow,” I gave him back; not with scorn, but with extreme weariness: theirs was the coldness and the pressure of lead; let him whelm me with no such weight. Happily, he was soon on another theme.

“On what terms were ‘little Polly’ and I? Unless my recollections deceive me, we were not foes⁠—”