Villette II

Lucy has always been rather sharp tongued and not someone who makes friends easily. She does however become friendly with one of the English girls at the school, Ginevra Fanshawe. She doesn't approve of her though. Ginevra is silly, flirtatious and vain and selfish and Lucy continually shows her disapproval. One of the masters, M Paul Emmanuel, is hostile to the English, yet Lucy finds herself being drawn to him. He is bad tempered, melodramatic, and middle aged, but she finds him more honest and likable than the rest of the Catholics at the school. She and he dispute and quarrel but there is a liking between them. A new English doctor becomes the medical attendant for the school, and when Lucy is taken ill during the summer vacation, she collapses and is taken to his house. She finds that she is in the home of her godmother Mrs Bretton, and that Doctor John is her son, now grown up. While staying there she meets Paulina de Bassompierre again, now a young lady, and her father, who has inherited a foreign title.