Quotation from: Villette

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


"Do--_do_ tell me who you are? I'll not repeat it," she urged,
adhering with ludicrous tenacity to the wise notion of an incognito
she had got hold of; and she squeezed the arm of which she had now
obtained full possession, and coaxed and conjured till I was obliged
to pause in the park to laugh. Throughout our walk she rang the most
fanciful changes on this theme; proving, by her obstinate credulity,
or incredulity, her incapacity to conceive how any person not
bolstered up by birth or wealth, not supported by some consciousness
of name or connection, could maintain an attitude of reasonable
integrity. As for me, it quite sufficed to my mental tranquillity that
I was known where it imported that known I should be; the rest sat on
me easily: pedigree, social position, and recondite intellectual
acquisition, occupied about the same space and place in my interests
and thoughts; they were my third-class lodgers--to whom could be
assigned only the small sitting-room and the little back bedroom: even
if the dining and drawing-rooms stood empty, I never confessed it to
them, as thinking minor accommodations better suited to their
circumstances. The world, I soon learned, held a different estimate:
and I make no doubt, the world is very right in its view, yet believe
also that I am not quite wrong in mine.

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