She was impulsive, generous, affectionate, but
she was also perverse, and, so to speak, uncertain. She was a creature
of moods and she was almost absolutely without self-control; and yet
nature had been kind to Maggie, giving her great beauty of form and
face and a character which a right training would have rendered noble.
Up to the present, however, this training had scarcely come to Miss
Oliphant. She was almost without relations and she was possessed of
more money than she knew what to do with. She had great abilities and
loved learning for the sake of learning, but till she came to St.
Benet's, her education had been as desultory as her life. She had
never been to school; her governess only taught her what she chose to
learn. As a child she was very fickle in this respect, working hard
from morning till night one day but idling the whole of the next. When
she was fifteen her guardian took her to Rome. The next two years were
spent in traveling, and Maggie, who knew nothing properly, picked up
that kind of superficial miscellaneous knowledge which made her
conversation brilliant and added to her many charms.
"You shall be brought out early," her guardian had said to her. "You
are not educated in the stereotyped fashion, but you know enough.
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