But although I was unfortunate enough never to have known a mother's love, I do not think I was actually very much the worse for the loss; for upon my mother's death her place was most ably and conscientiously filled by my aunt Griselda, my father's maiden sister, who faithfully did her duty both by my father and me until she too passed away when I was about eleven years old, by which time my father had completely conquered his original resentment toward me, and we had become all that father and son ought to be to each other.
