Of the Governess herself, whose name of Mrs. Teachum became a popular pseudonym for instructive writers, it must be confessed that she is a Presence hardly less dominating than Mrs. Mason. To the mature reader, who is uncomfortably conscious of having met her in real life, she is more formidable than any lay-figure of a theorist. Her husband, described as “a very sensible Man who took great Delight in improving his Wife,” having completed his task, disappears from the story and leaves her to pass on his improvements, to the “nine young Ladies commited to her Care.” She is “about forty Years old, tall and genteel in her Person, though somewhat inclined to Fat,” and her “lively and commanding Eye” (more human, if less hypnotic than Mrs. Mason’s) “created an Awe in all her little Scholars, except when she condescended to smile and talk familiarly with them.”