CHAPTER VII
July 1st.
She has been now over five weeks under my roof, and I have put
off the evil day of explaining her to Judith; and Judith returns
to-morrow.
I know it is odd for a philosophic bachelor to maintain in his
establishment a young and detached female of prepossessing
appearance. For the oddity I care not two pins. _Io son' io_.
But the question that exercises me occasionally is: In what
category are my relations with Carlotta to be classified? I do
not regard her as a daughter; still less as a sister: not even as
a deceased wife's sister. For a secretary she is too abysmally
ignorant, too grotesquely incapable. What she knows would be
made to kick the beam against the erudition of a guinea-pig. Yet
she must be classified somehow. I must allude to her as
something. At present she fills the place in the house of a
pretty (and expensive) Persian cat; and like a cat she has made
herself serenely at home.
A governess, a fat-checked girl, who I am afraid takes too
humorous a view of the position, comes of mornings to instruct
Carlotta in the rudiments of education.
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