apportion its task: leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour; ten minutes; five minutes—include all; do each piece of business in its turn with method; with rigid regularity。 The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun; and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment: you have had to seek no one’s pany; conversation; sympathy; forbearance; you have lived; in short; as an independent being ought to do。 Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer you; then you will not want me or any one else; happen what may。 Neglect it—go on as heretofore; craving; whining; and idling—and suffer the results of your idiocy; however bad and insuperable they may be。 I tell you this plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am now about to say; I shall steadily act on it。 After my mother’s death; I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is carried to the vault in Gateshead Church; you and I will be as separate as if we had never known each other。 You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents; I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this—if the whole human race; ourselves excepted; were swept away; and we two stood alone on the earth; I would leave you in the old world; and betake myself to the new。”
She closed her lips。
“You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade;” answered Georgiana。 “Everybody knows you