Looking at Lucy’s time with Miss Marchmont is interesting, both physically in Villette and per the events that take place. Structurally within the book, the caretaking takes place as the fourth chapter in the book. The reader gains the tool of sympathy through Marchmont’s lost love, which becomes essential later in the book. But, the most important bit here is the title of the next chapter “Turning a New Leaf”. As stated earlier, the reader is engaged to Lucy in the form of a marriage. The values the reader is taking on when engaged with Lucy and Miss Marchmont’s interactions, such as sympathy for the elderly, or the relatability of lost love, exist for the reader’s consumption, either to be altered or challenged as time passes within the novel, existing as a psychic entity, as Ablow brings forth. 
In some respects, for the reader, Lucy embodies Chronos, the personification of time. Villette is engaged to Lucy’s actions and her passing of time just as much as the reader. In regards to Miss Marchmont and Lucy, the notions trained to the reader are strictly adhered to Lucy’s passage of time with the interactions between the two. Without Lucy, there is no Marchmont, nor is there any sympathy to be found. 
Thus, in being the embodiment of time, Lucy is the reader’s guide, and Marchmont’s towards death as well. This continues onto the reader’s importance in trained sympathy, as training itself takes the passage of time to absorb from, and learn from. For Lucy, she is learning life lessons from Marchmont, and for the reader, directly tied to Lucy’s senses, they too are being trained. If sympathy is a commodity as was mentioned, then it is directly related to time.
Lastly, it is important to recognize sympathy in its various forms. While it is indeed trained to the reader, it is trained through many forms, all of which adhere to time. Lucy’ senses, Marchmont’s knowledge, the experiences Lucy undergoes, these are all critical for striking the sympathetic nerves. There are multiple levels for sympathy to be engaged in. 
Lucy’s study is perhaps more direct than that of the reader’s, but the more direct values Lucy takes on only compliment the abstract and varying notion of sympathy. Lucy is thus not trained by the novel, but directly through Marchmont, the novel’s values remain solely for the reader. 
The sense of time and how it progresses for the reader is carefully paced throughout the Miss Marchmont chapter. Both the key lessons of Marchmont’s nostalgic reminiscence and the actuality of the events occurring play to generate sympathy and pull on the reader’s strings at various levels, but are timeless to the reader in the respect that the lessons of sympathy to be trained to the reader exist regardless of age. In marrying to Lucy, the reader has the opportunity to be given the aforementioned sympathy as the sympathy is granted both to and from Lucy. However, the “encounter between mind and mind” as Ablow mentions, is the essential factor in being challenged on sympathy. Whereas Lucy and Marchmont are both bound by the limited time they have in the pages of the novel, the reader is still available to be trained and married to Lucy without such restraints. Ultimately, the abstract marriage Lucy and the reader engage into across Villette, almost contractually in reading, is essential to engaging in both the timeless and chronologically sensitive lessons of Miss Marchmont and Lucy’s interactions to better instill sympathy into the reader.
