THE LEGACY OF CAIN

by

Wilkie Collins

MRS. HENRY POWELL BARTLEY:

Permit me to add your name to my name, in publishing this novel. The pen which has written my books cannot be more agreeably employed than in acknowledging what I owe to the pen which has skillfully and patiently helped me, by copying my manuscripts for the printer.

WILKIE COLLINS.

Wimpole Street,
6th December, 1888.

AT the request of a person who has claims on me that I must not disown, I consent to look back through a long interval of years and to describe events which took place within the walls of an English prison during the earlier period of my appointment as Governor.

Viewing my task by the light which later experience casts on it, I think I shall act wisely by exercising some control over the freedom of my pen.

I propose to pass over in silence the name of the town in which is situated the prison once confided to my care. I shall observe a similar discretion in alluding to individuals--some dead, some living, at the present time.

Being obliged to write of a woman who deservedly suffered the extreme penalty of the law, I think she will be sufficiently identified if I call her The Prisoner. Of the four persons present on the evening before her execution three may be distinguished one from the other by allusion to their vocations in life. I here introduce them as The Chaplain, The Minister, and The Doctor. The fourth was a young woman. She has no claim on my consideration; and, when she is mentioned, her name may appear. If these reserves excite suspicion, I declare beforehand that they influence in no way the sense of responsibility which commands an honest man to speak the truth.

THE first of the events which I must now relate was the conviction of The Prisoner for the murder of her husband.

They had lived together in matrimony for little more than two years. The husband, a gentleman by birth and education, had mortally offended his relations in marrying a woman of an inferior rank of life. He was fast declining into a state of poverty, through his own reckless extravagance, at the time when he met with his death at his wife's hand.

Without attempting to excuse him, he deserved, to my mind, some tribute of regret. It is not to be denied that he was profligate in his habits and violent in his temper. But it is equally true that he was affectionate in the domestic circle, and, when moved by wisely applied remonstrance, sincerely penitent for sins committed under temptation that overpowered him. If his wife had killed him in a fit of jealous rage--under provocation, be it remembered, which the witnesses proved--she might have been convicted of manslaughter, and might have received a light sentence. But the evidence so undeniably revealed deliberate and merciless premeditation, that the only defense attempted by her counsel was madness, and the only alternative left to a righteous jury was a verdict which condemned the woman to death. Those mischievous members of the community, whose topsy-turvy sympathies feel for the living criminal and forget the dead victim, attempted to save her by means of high-flown petitions and contemptible correspondence in the newspapers. But the Judge held firm; and the Home Secretary held firm. They were entirely right; and the public were scandalously wrong.

Our Chaplain endeavored to offer the consolations of religion to the condemned wretch. She refused to accept his ministrations in language which filled him with grief and horror.

On the evening before the execution, the reverend gentleman laid on my table his own written report of a conversation which had passed between the Prisoner and himself.

"I see some hope, sir," he said, "of inclining the heart of this woman to religious belief, before it is too late. Will you read my report, and say if you agree with me?"

I read it, of course. It was called "A Memorandum," and was thus written:

"At his last interview with the Prisoner, the Chaplain asked her if she had ever entered a place of public worship. She replied that she had occasionally attended the services at a Congregational Church in this town; attracted by the reputation of the Minister as a preacher. 'He entirely failed to make a Christian of me,' she said; 'but I was struck by his eloquence. Besides, he interested me personally--he was a fine man.'

"In the dreadful situation in which the woman was placed, such language as this shocked the Chaplain; he appealed in vain to the Prisoner's sense of propriety. 'You don't understand women,' she answered. 'The greatest saint of my sex that ever lived likes to look at a preacher as well as to hear him. If he is an agreeable man, he has all the greater effect on her. This preacher's voice told me he was kind-hearted; and I had only to look at his beautiful eyes to see that he was trustworthy and true.'

"It was useless to repeat a protest which had already failed. Recklessly and flippantly as she had described it, an impression had been produced on her. It occurred to the Chaplain that he might at least make the attempt to turn this result to her own religious advantage. He asked whether she would receive the Minister, if the reverend gentleman came to the prison. 'That will depend,' she said, 'on whether you answer some questions which I want to put to you first.' The Chaplain consented; provided always that he could reply with propriety to what she asked of him. Her first question only related to himself.

"She said: 'The women who watch me tell me that you are a widower, and have a family of children. Is that true?'

"The Chaplain answered that it was quite true.

"She alluded next to a report, current in the town, that the Minister had resigned the pastorate. Being personally acquainted with him, the Chaplain was able to inform her that his resignation had not yet been accepted. On hearing this, she seemed to gather confidence. Her next inquiries succeeded each other rapidly, as follows:

" 'Is my handsome preacher married?'

" 'Yes.'

" 'Has he got any children?'

" 'He has never had any children.'

" 'How long has he been married?'

" 'As well as I know, about seven or eight years.

" 'What sort of woman is his wife?'

" 'A lady universally respected.'

" 'I don't care whether she is respected or not. Is she kind?'

" 'Certainly!'

" 'Is her husband well off?'

" 'He has a sufficient income.'

"After that reply, the Prisoner's curiosity appeared to be satisfied. She said, 'Bring your friend the preacher to me, if you like'--and there it ended.

"What her object could have been in putting these questions, it seems to be impossible to guess. Having accurately reported all that took place, the Chaplain declares, with heartfelt regret, that he can exert no religious influence over this obdurate woman. He leaves it to the Governor to decide whether the Minister of the Congregational Church may not succeed, where the Chaplain of the Jail has failed. Herein is the one last hope of saving the soul of the Prisoner, now under sentence of death!"

In those serious words the Memorandum ended. Although not personally acquainted with the Minister I had heard of him, on all sides, as an excellent man. In the emergency that confronted us he had, as it seemed to me, his own sacred right to enter the prison; assuming that he was willing to accept, what I myself felt to be, a very serious responsibility. The first necessity was to discover whether we might hope to obtain his services. With my full approval the Chaplain left me, to state the circumstances to his reverend colleague.

DURING my friend's absence, my attention was claimed by a sad incident--not unforeseen.

It is, I suppose, generally known that near relatives are admitted to take their leave of criminals condemned to death. In the case of the Prisoner now waiting for execution, no person applied to the authorities for permission to see her. I myself inquired if she had any relations living, and if she would like to see them. She answered: "None that I care to see, or that care to see me--except the nearest relation of all."

In those last words the miserable creature alluded to her only child, a little girl (an infant, I should say), who had passed her first year's birthday by a few months. The farewell interview was to take place on the mother's last evening on earth; and the child was now brought into my rooms, in charge of her nurse.

I had seldom seen a brighter or prettier little girl. She was just able to walk alone, and to enjoy the first delight of moving from one place to another. Quite of her own accord she came to me, attracted I daresay by the glitter of my watch-chain. Helping her to climb on my knee, I showed the wonders of the watch, and held it to her ear. At that past time, death had taken my good wife from me; my two boys were away at Harrow School; my domestic life was the life of a lonely man. Whether I was reminded of the bygone days when my sons were infants on my knee, listening to the ticking of my watch--or whether the friendless position of the poor little creature, who had lost one parent and was soon to lose the other by a violent death, moved me in depths of pity not easily reached in my later experience--I am not able to say. This only I know: my heart ached for the child while she was laughing and listening; and something fell from me on the watch which I don't deny might have been a tear. A few of the toys, mostly broken now, which my two children used to play with are still in my possession; kept, like my poor wife's favorite jewels, for old remembrance' sake. These I took from their repository when the attraction of my watch showed signs of failing. The child pounced on them with her chubby hands, and screamed with pleasure. And the hangman was waiting for her mother--and, more horrid still, the mother deserved it!

My duty required me to let the Prisoner know that her little daughter had arrived. Did that heart of iron melt at last? It might have been so, or it might not; the message sent back kept her secret. All that it said to me was: "Let the child wait till I send for her."

The Minister had consented to help us. On his arrival at the prison, I received him privately in my study.

I had only to look at his face--pitiably pale and agitated--to see that he was a sensitive man, not always able to control his nerves on occasions which tried his moral courage. A kind, I might almost say a noble face, and a voice unaffectedly persuasive, at once prepossessed me in his favor. The few words of welcome that I spoke were intended to compose him. They failed to produce the impression on which I had counted.

"My experience," he said, "has included many melancholy duties, and has tried my composure in terrible scenes; but I have never yet found myself in the presence of an unrepentant criminal, sentenced to death--and that criminal a woman and a mother. I own, sir, that I am shaken by the prospect before me."

I suggested that he should wait a while, in the hope that time and quiet might help him. He thanked me, and refused.

"If I have any knowledge of myself," he said, "terrors of anticipation lose their hold when I am face to face with a serious call on me. The longer I remain here, the less worthy I shall appear of the trust that has been placed in me--the trust which, please God, I mean to deserve."

My own observation of human nature told me that this was wisely said. I led the way at once to the cell.

THE Prisoner was seated on her bed, quietly talking with the woman appointed to watch her. When she rose to receive us, I saw the Minister start. The face that confronted him would, in my opinion, have taken any man by surprise, if he had first happened to see it within the walls of a prison.

Visitors to the picture-galleries of Italy, growing weary of Holy Families in endless succession, observe that the idea of the Madonna, among the rank and file of Italian Painters, is limited to one changeless and familiar type. I can hardly hope to be believed when I say that the personal appearance of the murderess recalled that type. She presented the delicate light hair, the quiet eyes, the finely-shaped lower features and the correctly oval form of face, repeated in hundreds on hundreds of the conventional works of Art to which I have ventured to allude. To those who doubt me, I can only declare that what I have here written is undisguised and absolute truth. Let me add that daily observation of all classes of criminals, extending over many years, has considerably diminished my faith in physiognomy as a safe guide to the discovery of character. Nervous trepidation looks like guilt. Guilt, firmly sustained by insensibility, looks like innocence. One of the vilest wretches ever placed under my charge won the sympathies (while he was waiting for his trial) of every person who saw him, including even the persons employed in the prison. Only the other day, ladies and gentlemen coming to visit me passed a body of men at work on the road. Judges of physiognomy among them were horrified at the criminal atrocity betrayed in every face that they noticed. They condoled with me on the near neighborhood of so many convicts to my official place of residence. I looked out of the window and saw a group of honest laborers (whose only crime was poverty) employed by the parish!

Having instructed the female warder to leave the room--but to take care that she waited within call--I looked again at the Minister.

Confronted by the serious responsibility that he had undertaken, he justified what he had said to me. Still pale, still distressed, he was now nevertheless master of himself. I turned to the door to leave him alone with the Prisoner. She called me back.

"Before this gentleman tries to convert me," she said, "I want you to wait here and be a witness."

Finding that we were both willing to comply with this request, she addressed herself directly to the Minister. "Suppose I promise to listen to your exhortations," she began, "what do you promise to do for me in return?"

The voice in which she spoke to him was steady and clear; a marked contrast to the tremulous earnestness with which he answered her.

"I promise to urge you to repentance and the confession of your crime. I promise to implore the divine blessing on me in the effort to save your poor guilty soul."

She looked at him, and listened to him, as if he was speaking to her in an unknown tongue, and went on with what she had to say as quietly as ever.

"When I am hanged to-morrow, suppose I die without confessing, without repenting--are you one of those who believe I shall be doomed to eternal punishment in another life?"

"I believe in the mercy of God."

"Answer my question, if you please. Is an impenitent sinner eternally punished? Do you believe that?"

"My Bible leaves me no other alternative."

She paused for a while, evidently considering with special attention what she was about to say next.

"As a religious man," she resumed, "would you be willing to make some sacrifice, rather than let a fellow-creature go--after a disgraceful death--to everlasting torment?"

"I know of no sacrifice in my power," he said, fervently, "to which I would not rather submit than let you die in the present dreadful state of your mind."

The Prisoner turned to me. "Is the person who watches me waiting outside?"

"Yes."

"Will you be so kind as to call her in? I have a message for her."

It was plain that she had been leading the way to the delivery of that message, whatever it might be, in all that she had said up to the present time. So far my poor powers of penetration helped me, and no further.

The warder appeared, and received her message. "Tell the woman who has come here with my little girl that I want to see the child."

Taken completely by surprise, I signed to the attendant to wait for further instructions.

In a moment more I had sufficiently recovered myself to see the impropriety of permitting any obstacle to interpose between the Minister and his errand of mercy. I gently reminded the Prisoner that she would have a later opportunity of seeing her child. "Your first duty," I told her, "is to hear and to take to heart what the clergyman has to say to you."

For the second time I attempted to leave the cell. For the second time this impenetrable woman called me back.

"Take the parson away with you," she said. "I refuse to listen to him."

The patient Minister yielded, and appealed to me to follow his example. I reluctantly sanctioned the delivery of the message.

After a brief interval the child was brought to us, tired and sleepy. For a while the nurse roused her by setting her on her feet. She happened to notice the Minister first. Her bright eyes rested on him, gravely wondering. He kissed her, and, after a momentary hesitation, gave her to her mother. The horror of the situation overpowered him: he turned his face away from us. I understood what he felt; he almost overthrew my own self-command.

The Prisoner spoke to the nurse in no friendly tone: "You can go."

The nurse turned to me, ostentatiously ignoring the words that had been addressed to her. "Am I to go, sir, or to stay?" I suggested that she should return to the waiting-room. She returned at once in silence. The Prisoner looked after her as she went out, with such an expression of hatred in her eyes that the Minister noticed it.

"What has that person done to offend you?" he asked.

"She is the last person in the whole world whom I should have chosen to take care of my child, if the power of choosing had been mine. But I have been in prison, without a living creature to represent me or to take my part. No more of that; my troubles will be over in a few hours more. I want you to look at my little girl, whose troubles are all to come. Do you call her pretty? Do you feel interested in her?"

The sorrow and pity in his face answered for him.

Quietly sleeping, the poor baby rested on her mother's bosom. Was the heart of the murderess softened by the divine influence of maternal love? The hands that held the child trembled a little. For the first time it seemed to cost her an effort to compose herself, before she could speak to the Minister again.

"When I die to-morrow," she said, "I leave my child helpless and friendless--disgraced by her mother's shameful death. The workhouse may take her--or a charitable asylum may take her." She paused; a first tinge of color rose on her pale face; she broke into an outburst of rage. "Think of my daughter being brought up by charity! She may suffer poverty, she may be treated with contempt, she may be employed by brutal people in menial work. I can't endure it; it maddens me. If she is not saved from that wretched fate, I shall die despairing, I shall die cursing--"

The Minister sternly stopped her before she could say the next word. To my astonishment she appeared to be humbled, to be even ashamed: she asked his pardon: "Forgive me; I won't forget myself again. They tell me you have no children of your own. Is that a sorrow to you and your wife?"

Her altered tone touched him. He answered sadly and kindly: "It is the one sorrow of our lives."

The purpose which she had been keeping in view from the moment when the Minister entered her cell was no mystery now. Ought I to have interfered? Let me confess a weakness, unworthy perhaps of my office. I was so sorry for the child--I hesitated.

My silence encouraged the mother. She advanced to the Minister with the sleeping infant in her arms.

"I daresay you have sometimes thought of adopting a child?" she said. "Perhaps you can guess now what I had in my mind, when I asked if you would consent to a sacrifice? Will you take this wretched innocent little creature home with you?" She lost her self-possession once more. "A motherless creature to-morrow," she burst out. "Think of that."

God knows how I still shrunk from it! But there was no alternative now; I was bound to remember my duty to the excellent man, whose critical position at that moment was, in some degree at least, due to my hesitation in asserting my authority. Could I allow the Prisoner to presume on his compassionate nature, and to hurry him into a decision which, in his calmer moments, he might find reason to regret? I spoke to him. Does the man live who--having to say what I had to say--could have spoken to the doomed mother?

"I am sorry to have allowed this to go on," I said. "In justice to yourself, sir, don't answer!"

She turned on me with a look of fury.

"He shall answer," she cried.

I saw, or thought I saw, signs of yielding in his face. "Take time," I persisted--"take time to consider before you decide."

She stepped up to me.

"Take time?" she repeated. "Are you inhuman enough to talk of time, in my presence?"

She laid the sleeping child on her bed, and fell on her knees before the Minister: "I promise to hear your exhortations--I promise to do all a woman can to believe and repent. Oh, I know myself! My heart, once hardened, is a heart that no human creature can touch. The one way to my better nature--if I have a better nature--is through that poor babe. Save her from the workhouse! Don't let them make a pauper of her!" She sank prostrate at his feet, and beat her hands in frenzy on the floor. "You want to save my guilty soul," she reminded him furiously. "There's but one way of doing it. Save my child!"

He raised her. Her fierce tearless eyes questioned his face in a mute expectation dreadful to see. Suddenly, a foretaste of death--the death that was so near now!--struck her with a shivering fit: her head dropped on the Minister's shoulder. Other men might have shrunk from the contact of it. That true Christian let it rest.

Under the maddening sting of suspense, her sinking energies rallied for an instant. In a whisper, she was just able to put the supreme question to him.

"Yes? or No?"

He answered: "Yes."

A faint breath of relief, just audible in the silence, told me that she had heard him. It was her last effort. He laid her, insensible, on the bed, by the side of her sleeping child. "Look at them," was all he said to me; "how could I refuse?"

THE services of our medical officer were required, in order to hasten the recovery of the Prisoner's senses.

When the Doctor and I left the cell together, she was composed, and ready (in the performance of her promise) to listen to the exhortations of the Minister. The sleeping child was left undisturbed, by the mother's desire. If the Minister felt tempted to regret what he had done, there was the artless influence which would check him! As we stepped into the corridor, I gave the female warder her instructions to remain on the watch, and to return to her post when she saw the Minister come out.

In the meantime, my companion had walked on a little way.

Possessed of ability and experience within the limits of his profession, he was in other respects a man with a crotchety mind; bold to the verge of recklessness in the expression of his opinion; and possessed of a command of language that carried everything before it. Let me add that he was just and merciful in his intercourse with others, and I shall have summed him up fairly enough. When I joined him he seemed to be absorbed in reflection.

"Thinking of the Prisoner?" I said.

"Thinking of what is going on, at this moment, in the condemned cell," he answered, "and wondering if any good will come of it."

I was not without hope of a good result, and I said so.

The Doctor disagreed with me. "I don't believe in that woman's penitence," he remarked; "and I look upon the parson as a poor weak creature. What is to become of the child?"

There was no reason for concealing from one of my colleagues the benevolent decision, on the part of the good Minister, of which I had been a witness. The Doctor listened to me with the first appearance of downright astonishment that I had ever observed in his face. When I had done, he made an extraordinary reply:

"Governor, I retract what I said of the parson just now. He is one of the boldest men that ever stepped into a pulpit."

Was the doctor in earnest? Strongly in earnest; there could be no doubt of it. Before I could ask him what he meant, he was called away to a patient on the other side of the prison. When we parted at the door of my room, I made it a request that my medical friend would return to me and explain what he had just said.

"Considering that you are the governor of a prison," he replied, "you are a singularly rash man. If I come back, how do you know I shall not bore you?"

"My rashness runs the risk of that," I rejoined.

"Tell me something, before I allow you to run your risk," he said. "Are you one of those people who think that the tempers of children are formed by the accidental influences which happen to be about them? Or do you agree with me that the tempers of children are inherited from their parents?"

The Doctor (as I concluded) was still strongly impressed by the Minister's resolution to adopt a child whose wicked mother had committed the most atrocious of all crimes. Was some serious foreboding in secret possession of his mind? My curiosity to hear him was now increased tenfold. I replied without hesitation:

"I agree with you."

He looked at me with his sense of humor twinkling in his eyes. "Do you know I rather expected that answer?" he said, slyly. "All right. I'll come back."

Left by myself, I took up the day's newspaper.

My attention wandered; my thoughts were in the cell with the Minister and the Prisoner. How would it end? Sometimes, I was inclined to doubt with the Doctor. Sometimes, I took refuge in my own more hopeful view. These idle reflections were agreeably interrupted by the appearance of my friend, the Chaplain.

"You are always welcome," I said; "and doubly welcome just now. I am feeling a little worried and anxious."

"And you are naturally," the Chaplain added, not at all disposed to receive a stranger?"

"Is the stranger a friend of yours?" I asked.

"Oh, no! Having occasion, just now, to go into the waiting-room, I found a young woman there, who asked me if she could see you. She thinks you have forgotten her, and she is tired of waiting. I merely undertook, of course, to mention what she had said to me."

The nurse having been in this way recalled to my memory, I felt some little interest in seeing her, after what had passed in the cell. In plainer words, I was desirous of judging for myself whether she deserved the hostile feeling which the Prisoner had shown toward her. I thanked the Chaplain before he left me, and gave the servant the necessary instructions. When she entered the room, I looked at the woman attentively for the first time.

Youth and a fine complexion, a well-made figure and a natural grace of movement--these were her personal attractions, so far as I could see. Her defects were, to my mind, equally noticeable. Under a heavy forehead, her piercing eyes looked out at persons and things with an expression which was not to my taste. Her large mouth--another defect, in my opinion--would have been recommended to mercy, in the estimation of many men, by her magnificent teeth; white, well-shaped, cruelly regular. Believers in physiognomy might perhaps have seen the betrayal of an obstinate nature in the lengthy firmness of her chin. While I am trying to describe her, let me not forget her dress. A woman's dress is the mirror in which we may see the reflection of a woman's nature. Bearing in mind the melancholy and impressive circumstances under which she had brought the child to the prison, the gayety of color in her gown and her bonnet implied either a total want of feeling, or a total want of tact. As to her position in life, let me confess that I felt, after a closer examination, at a loss to determine it. She was certainly not a lady. The Prisoner had spoken of her as if she was a domestic servant who had forfeited her right to consideration and respect. And she had entered the prison, as a nurse might have entered it, in charge of a child. I did what we all do when we are not clever enough to find the answer to a riddle--I gave it up.

"What can I do for you?" I asked.

"Perhaps you can tell me," she answered, "how much longer I am to be kept waiting in this prison."

"The decision," I reminded her, "doesn't depend on me."

"Then who does it depend on?"

The Minister had undoubtedly acquired the sole right of deciding. It was for him to say whether this woman should, or should not, remain in attendance on the child whom he had adopted. In the meanwhile, the feeling of distrust which was gaining on my mind warned me to remember the value of reserve in holding intercourse with a stranger.

She seemed to be irritated by my silence. "If the decision doesn't rest with you," she asked, "why did you tell me to stay in the waiting-room?"

"You brought the little girl into the prison," I said; "was it not natural to suppose that your mistress might want you--"

"Stop, sir!"

I had evidently given offense; I stopped directly.

"No person on the face of the earth," she declared, loftily, "has ever had the right to call herself my mistress. Of my own free will, sir, I took charge of the child."

"Because you are fond of her?" I suggested.

"I hate her."

It was unwise on my part--I protested. "Hate a baby little more than a year old!" I said.

"Her baby!"

She said it with the air of a woman who had produced an unanswerable reason. "I am accountable to nobody," she went on. "If I consented to trouble myself with the child, it was in remembrance of my friendship--notice, if you please, that I say friendship--with the unhappy father."

Putting together what I had just heard, and what I had seen in the cell, I drew the right conclusion at last. The woman, whose position in life had been thus far an impenetrable mystery to me, now stood revealed as one, among other objects of the Prisoner's jealousy, during her disastrous married life. A serious doubt occurred to me as to the authority under which the husband's mistress might be acting, after the husband's death. I instantly put it to the test.

"Do I understand you to assert any claim to the child?" I asked.

"Claim?" she repeated. "I know no more of the child than you do. I heard for the first time that such a creature was in existence, when her murdered father sent for me in his dying moments. At his entreaty I promised to take care of her, while her vile mother was out of the house and in the hands of the law. My promise has been performed. If I am expected (having brought her to the prison) to take her away again, understand this: I am under no obligation (even if I could afford it) to burden myself with that child; I shall hand her over to the workhouse authorities."

I forgot myself once more--I lost my temper.

"Leave the room," I said. "Your unworthy hands will not touch the poor baby again. She is provided for."

"I don't believe you!" the wretch burst out. "Who has taken the child?"

A quiet voice answered: "I have taken her."

We both looked round and saw the Minister standing in the open doorway, with the child in his arms. The ordeal that he had gone through in the condemned cell was visible in his face; he looked miserably haggard and broken. I was eager to know if his merciful interest in the Prisoner had purified her guilty soul--but at the same time I was afraid, after what he had but too plainly suffered, to ask him to enter into details.

"Only one word," I said. "Are your anxieties at rest?"

"God's mercy has helped me," he answered. "I have not spoken in vain. She believes; she repents; she has confessed the crime."

After handing the written and signed confession to me, he approached the venomous creature, still lingering in the room to hear what passed between us. Before I could stop him, he spoke to her, under a natural impression that he was addressing the Prisoner's servant.

"I am afraid you will be disappointed," he said, "when I tell you that your services will no longer be required. I have reasons for placing the child under the care of a nurse of my own choosing."

She listened with an evil smile.

"I know who furnished you with your reasons," she answered. "Apologies are quite needless, so far as I am concerned. If you had proposed to me to look after the new member of your family there, I should have felt it my duty to myself to have refused. I am not a nurse--I am an independent single lady. I see by your dress that you are a clergyman. Allow me to present myself as a mark of respect to your cloth. I am Miss Elizabeth Chance. May I ask the favor of your name?"

Too weary and too preoccupied to notice the insolence of her manner, the Minister mentioned his name. "I am anxious," he said, "to know if the child has been baptized. Perhaps you can enlighten me?"

Still insolent, Miss Elizabeth Chance shook her head carelessly. "I never heard--and, to tell you the truth, I never cared to hear--whether she was christened or not. Call her by what name you like, I can tell you this--you will find your adopted daughter a heavy handful."

The Minister turned to me. "What does she mean?"

"I will try to tell you," Miss Chance interposed. "Being a clergyman, you know who Deborah was? Very well. I am Deborah now; and I prophesy." She pointed to the child. "Remember what I say, reverend sir! You will find the tigress-cub take after its mother."

With those parting words, she favored us with a low curtsey, and left the room.

THE Minister looked at me in an absent manner; his attention seemed to have been wandering. "What was it Miss Chance said?" he asked.

Before I could speak, a friend's voice at the door interrupted us. The Doctor, returning to me as he had promised, answered the Minister's question in these words:

"I must have passed the person you mean, sir, as I was coming in here; and I heard her say: 'You will find the tigress-cub take after its mother.' If she had known how to put her meaning into good English, Miss Chance--that is the name you mentioned, I think--might have told you that the vices of the parents are inherited by the children. And the one particular parent she had in her mind," the Doctor continued, gently patting the child's cheek, "was no doubt the mother of this unfortunate little creature--who may, or may not, live to show you that she comes of a bad stock and inherits a wicked nature."

I was on the point of protesting against my friend's interpretation, when the Minister stopped me.

"Let me thank you, sir, for your explanation," he said to the Doctor. "As soon as my mind is free, I will reflect on what you have said. Forgive me, Mr. Governor," he went on, "if I leave you, now that I have placed the Prisoner's confession in your hands. It has been an effort to me to say the little I have said, since I first entered this room. I can think of nothing but that unhappy criminal, and the death that she must die to-morrow."

"Does she wish you to be present?" I asked.

"She positively forbids it. 'After what you have done for me,' she said, 'the least I can do in return is to prevent your being needlessly distressed.' She took leave of me; she kissed the little girl for the last time--oh, don't ask me to tell you about it! I shall break down if I try. Come, my darling!" He kissed the child tenderly, and took her away with him.

"That man is a strange compound of strength and weakness," the Doctor remarked. "Did you notice his face, just now? Nine men out of ten, suffering as he suffered, would have failed to control themselves. Such resolution as his may conquer the difficulties that are in store for him yet."

It was a trial of my temper to hear my clever colleague justifying, in this way, the ignorant prediction of an insolent woman.

"There are exceptions to all rules," I insisted. "And why are the virtues of the parents not just as likely to descend to the children as the vices? There was a fund of good, I can tell you, in that poor baby's father--though I don't deny that he was a profligate man. And even the horrible mother--as you heard just now--has virtue enough left in her to feel grateful to the man who has taken care of her child. These are facts; you can't dispute them."

The Doctor took out his pipe. "Do you mind my smoking?" he asked. "Tobacco helps me to arrange my ideas."

I gave him the means of arranging his ideas; that is to say, I gave him the match-box. He blew some preliminary clouds of smoke and then he answered me:

"For twenty years past, my friend, I have been studying the question of hereditary transmission of qualities; and I have found vices and diseases descending more frequently to children than virtue and health. I don't stop to ask why: there is no end to that sort of curiosity. What I have observed is what I tell you; no more and no less. You will say this is a horribly discouraging result of experience, for it tends to show that children come into the world at a disadvantage on the day of their birth. Of course they do. Children are born deformed; children are born deaf, dumb, or blind; children are born with the seeds in them of deadly diseases. Who can account for the cruelties of creation? Why are we endowed with life--only to end in death? And does it ever strike you, when you are cutting your mutton at dinner, and your cat is catching its mouse, and your spider is suffocating its fly, that we are all, big and little together, born to one certain inheritance--the privilege of eating each other?"

"Very sad," I admitted. "But it will all be set right in another world."

"Are you quite sure of that?" the Doctor asked.

"Quite sure, thank God! And it would be better for you if you felt about it as I do."

"We won't dispute, my dear Governor. I don't scoff at comforting hopes; I don't deny the existence of occasional compensations. But I do see, nevertheless, that Evil has got the upper hand among us, on this curious little planet. Judging by my observation and experience, that ill-fated baby's chance of inheriting the virtues of her parents is not to be compared with her chances of inheriting their vices; especially if she happens to take after her mother. There the virtue is not conspicuous, and the vice is one enormous fact. When I think of the growth of that poisonous hereditary taint, which may come with time--when I think of passions let loose and temptations lying in ambush--I see the smooth surface of the Minister's domestic life with dangers lurking under it which make me shake in my shoes. God! what a life I should lead, if I happened to be in his place, some years hence. Suppose I said or did something (in the just exercise of my parental authority) which offended my adopted daughter. What figure would rise from the dead in my memory, when the girl bounced out of the room in a rage? The image of her mother would be the image I should see. I should remember what her mother did when she was provoked; I should lock my bedroom door, in my own house, at night. I should come down to breakfast with suspicions in my cup of tea, if I discovered that my adopted daughter had poured it out. Oh, yes; it's quite true that I might be doing the girl a cruel injustice all the time; but how am I to be sure of that? I am only sure that her mother was hanged for one of the most merciless murders committed in our time. Pass the match-box. My pipe's out, and my confession of faith has come to an end."

It was useless to dispute with a man who possessed his command of language. At the same time, there was a bright side to the poor Minister's prospects which the Doctor had failed to see. It was barely possible that I might succeed in putting my positive friend in the wrong. I tried the experiment, at any rate.

"You seem to have forgotten," I reminded him, "that the child will have every advantage that education can offer to her, and will be accustomed from her earliest years to restraining and purifying influences, in a clergyman's household."

Now that he was enjoying the fumes of tobacco, the Doctor was as placid and sweet-tempered as a man could be.

"Quite true," he said.

"Do you doubt the influence of religion?" I asked sternly.

He answered, sweetly: "Not at all"

"Or the influence of kindness?"

"Oh, dear, no!"

"Or the force of example?"

"I wouldn't deny it for the world."

I had not expected this extraordinary docility. The Doctor had got the upper hand of me again--a state of things that I might have found it hard to endure, but for a call of duty which put an end to our sitting. One of the female warders appeared with a message from the condemned cell. The Prisoner wished to see the Governor and the Medical Officer.

"Is she ill?" the Doctor inquired.

"No, sir."

"Hysterical? or agitated, perhaps?"

"As easy and composed, sir, as a person can be."

We set forth together for the condemned cell.

THERE was a considerate side to my friend's character, which showed itself when the warder had left us.

He was especially anxious to be careful of what he said to a woman in the Prisoner's terrible situation; especially in the event of her having been really subjected to the influence of religious belief. On the Minister's own authority, I declared that there was every reason to adopt this conclusion; and in support of what I had said I showed him the confession. It only contained a few lines, acknowledging that she had committed the murder and that she deserved her sentence. "From the planning of the crime to the commission of the crime, I was in my right senses throughout. I knew what I was doing." With that remarkable disavowal of the defense set up by her advocate, the confession ended.

My colleague read the paper, and handed it back to me without making any remark. I asked if he suspected the Prisoner of feigning conversion to please the Minister.

"She shall not discover it," he answered, gravely, "if I do."

It would not be true to say that the Doctor's obstinacy had shaken my belief in the good result of the Minister's interference. I may, however, acknowledge that I felt some misgivings, which were not dispelled when I found myself in the presence of the Prisoner.

I had expected to see her employed in reading the Bible. The good book was closed and was not even placed within her reach. The occupation to which she was devoting herself astonished and repelled me.

Some carelessness on the part of the attendant had left on the table the writing materials that had been needed for her confession. She was using them now--when death on the scaffold was literally within a few hours of her--to sketch a portrait of the female warder, who was on the watch! The Doctor and I looked at each other; and now the sincerity of her repentance was something that I began to question, too.

She laid down the pen, and proceeded quietly to explain herself.

"Even the little time that is left to me proves to be a weary time to get through," she said. "I am making a last use of the talent for drawing and catching a likeness, which has been one of my gifts since I was a girl. You look as if you didn't approve of such employment as this for a woman who is going to be hanged. Well, sir, I have no doubt you are right." She paused, and tore up the portrait. "If I have misbehaved myself," she resumed, "I make amends. To find you in an indulgent frame of mind is of importance to me just now. I have a favor to ask of you. May the warder leave the cell for a few minutes?"

Giving the woman permission to withdraw for a while, I waited with some anxiety to hear what the Prisoner wanted of me.

"I have something to say to you," she proceeded, "on the subject of executions. The face of a person who is going to be hanged is hidden, as I have been told, by a white cap drawn over it. Is that true?"

How another man might have felt, in my place, I cannot, of course, say. To my mind, such a question--on her lips--was too shocking to be answered in words. I bowed.

"And the body is buried," she went on, "in the prison?"

I could remain silent no longer. "Is there no human feeling left in you?" I burst out. "What do these horrid questions mean?"

"Don't be angry with me, sir; you shall hear directly. I want to know first if I am to be buried in the prison?"

I replied as before, by a bow.

"Now," she said, "I may tell you what I mean. In the autumn of last year I was taken to see some waxworks. Portraits of criminals were among them. There was one portrait--" She hesitated; her infernal self-possession failed her at last. The color left her face; she was no longer able to look at me firmly. "There was one portrait," she resumed, "that had been taken after the execution. The face was so hideous; it was swollen to such a size in its frightful deformity--oh, sir, don't let me be seen in that state, even by the strangers who bury me! Use your influence--forbid them to take the cap off my face when I am dead--order them to bury me in it, and I swear to you I'll meet death tomorrow as coolly as the boldest man that ever mounted the scaffold!" Before I could stop her, she seized me by the hand, and wrung it with a furious power that left the mark of her grasp on me, in a bruise, for days afterward. "Will you do it?" she cried. "You're an honorable man; you will keep your word. Give me your promise!"

I gave her my promise.

The relief to her tortured spirit expressed itself horribly in a burst of frantic laughter. "I can't help it," she gasped; "I'm so happy."

My enemies said of me, when I got my appointment, that I was too excitable a man to be governor of a prison. Perhaps they were not altogether wrong. Anyhow, the quick-witted Doctor saw some change in me, which I was not aware of myself. He took my arm and led me out of the cell. "Leave her to me," he whispered. "The fine edge of my nerves was worn off long ago in the hospital."

When we met again, I asked what had passed between the Prisoner and himself.

"I gave her time to recover," he told me; "and, except that she looked a little paler than usual, there was no trace left of the frenzy that you remember. 'I ought to apologize for troubling you,' she said; 'but it is perhaps natural that I should think, now and then, of what is to happen to me to-morrow morning. As a medical man, you will be able to enlighten me. Is death by hanging a painful death?' She had put it so politely that I felt bound to answer her. 'If the neck happens to be broken,' I said, 'hanging is a sudden death; fright and pain (if there is any pain) are both over in an instant. As to the other form of death which is also possible (I mean death by suffocation), I must own as an honest man that I know no more about it than you do.' After considering a little, she made a sensible remark, and followed it by an embarrassing request. 'A great deal,' she said, 'must depend on the executioner. I am not afraid of death, Doctor. Why should I be? My anxiety about my little girl is set at rest; I have nothing left to live for. But I don't like pain. Would you mind telling the executioner to be careful? Or would it be better if I spoke to him myself?' I said I thought it would come with a better grace from herself. She understood me directly; and we dropped the subject. Are you surprised at her coolness, after your experience of her?"

I confessed that I was surprised.

"Think a little," the Doctor said. "The one sensitive place in that woman's nature is the place occupied by her self-esteem."

I objected to this that she had shown fondness for her child.

My friend disposed of the objection with his customary readiness.

"The maternal instinct," he said. "A cat is fond of her kittens; a cow is fond of her calf. No, sir, the one cause of that outbreak of passion which so shocked you--a genuine outbreak, beyond all doubt--is to be found in the vanity of a fine feminine creature, overpowered by a horror of looking hideous, even after her death. Do you know I rather like that woman?"

"Is it possible that you are in earnest?" I asked.

"I know as well as you do," he answered, "that this is neither a time nor a place for jesting. The fact is, the Prisoner carries out an idea of mine. It is my positive conviction that the worst murders--I mean murders deliberately planned--are committed by persons absolutely deficient in that part of the moral organization which feels. The night before they are hanged they sleep. On their last morning they eat a breakfast. Incapable of realizing the horror of murder, they are incapable of realizing the horror of death. Do you remember the last murderer who was hanged here--a gentleman's coachman who killed his wife? He had but two anxieties while he was waiting for execution. One was to get his allowance of beer doubled, and the other was to be hanged in his coachman's livery. No! no! these wretches are all alike; they are human creatures born with the temperaments of tigers. Take my word for it, we need feel no anxiety about to-morrow. The Prisoner will face the crowd round the scaffold with composure; and the people will say, 'She died game.' "

THE Capital Punishment of the Prisoner is in no respect connected with my purpose in writing the present narrative. Neither do I desire to darken these pages by describing in detail an act of righteous retribution which must present, by the nature of it, a scene of horror. For these reasons I ask to be excused, if I limit what I must needs say of the execution within the compass of a few words--and pass on.

The one self-possessed person among us was the miserable woman who suffered the penalty of death.

Not very discreetly, as I think, the Chaplain asked her if she had truly repented. She answered: "I have confessed the crime, sir. What more do you want?" To my mind--still hesitating between the view that believes with the Minister, and the view that doubts with the Doctor--this reply leaves a way open to hope of her salvation. Her last words to me, as she mounted the steps of the scaffold, were: "Remember your promise." It was easy for me to be true to my word. At that bygone time, no difficulties were placed in my way by such precautions as are now observed in the conduct of executions within the walls of the prison. From the time of her death to the time of her burial, no living creature saw her face. She rests, veiled in her prison grave.

Let me now turn to living interests, and to scenes removed from the thunder-clouds of crime.

On the next day I received a visit from the Minister.

His first words entreated me not to allude to the terrible event of the previous day. "I cannot escape thinking of it," he said, "but I may avoid speaking of it." This seemed to me to be the misplaced confidence of a weak man in the refuge of silence. By way of changing the subject, I spoke of the child. There would be serious difficulties to contend with (as I ventured to suggest), if he remained in the town, and allowed his new responsibilities to become the subject of public talk.

His reply to this agreeably surprised me. There were no difficulties to be feared.

The state of his wife's health had obliged him (acting under medical advice) to try the influence of her native air. An interval of some months might elapse before the good effect of the change had sufficiently declared itself; and a return to the peculiar climate of the town might bring on a relapse. There had consequently been no alternative to but resign his charge. Only on that day the resignation had been accepted--with expressions of regret sincerely reciprocated by himself. He proposed to leave the town immediately; and one of the objects of his visit was to bid me good-by.

"The next place I live in," he said, "will be more than a hundred miles away. At that distance I may hope to keep events concealed which must be known only to ourselves. So far as I can see, there are no risks of discovery lurking in this place. My servants (only two in number) have both been born here, and have both told my wife that they have no wish to go away. As to the person who introduced herself to me by the name of Miss Chance, she was traced to the railway station yesterday afternoon, and took her ticket for London."

I congratulated the Minister on the good fortune which had befriended him, so far.

"You will understand how carefully I have provided against being deceived," he continued, "when I tell you what my plans are. The persons among whom my future lot is cast--and the child herself, of course--must never suspect that the new member of my family is other than my own daughter. This is deceit, I admit; but it is deceit that injures no one. I hope you see the necessity for it, as I do."

There could be no doubt of the necessity.

If the child was described as adopted, there would be curiosity about the circumstances, and inquiries relating to the parents. Prevaricating replies lead to suspicion, and suspicion to discovery. But for the wise course which the Minister had decided on taking, the poor child's life might have been darkened by the horror of the mother's crime, and the infamy of the mother's death.

Having quieted my friend's needless scruples by this perfectly sincere expression of opinion, I ventured to approach the central figure in his domestic circle, by means of a question relating to his wife. How had that lady received the unfortunate little creature, for whose appearance on the home-scene she must have been entirely unprepared?

The Minister's manner showed some embarrassment; he prefaced what he had to tell me with praises of his wife, equally creditable no doubt to both of them. The beauty of the child, the pretty ways of the child, he said, fascinated the admirable woman at first sight. It was not to be denied that she had felt, and had expressed, misgivings, on being informed of the circumstances under which the Minister's act of mercy had been performed. But her mind was too well balanced to incline to this state of feeling, when her husband had addressed her in defense of his conduct. She then understood that the true merit of a good action consisted in patiently facing the sacrifices involved. Her interest in the new daughter being, in this way, ennobled by a sense of Christian duty, there had been no further difference of opinion between the married pair.

I listened to this plausible explanation with interest, but, at the same time, with doubts of the lasting nature of the lady's submission to circumstances; suggested, perhaps, by the constraint in the Minister's manner. It was well for both of us when we changed the subject. He reminded me of the discouraging view which the Doctor had taken of the prospect before him.

"I will not attempt to decide whether your friend is right or wrong," he said. "Trusting, as I do, in the mercy of God, I look hopefully to a future time when all that is brightest and best in the nature of my adopted child will be developed under my fostering care. If evil tendencies show themselves, my reliance will be confidently placed on pious example, on religious instruction, and, above all, on intercession by prayer. Repeat to your friend," he concluded, "what you have just heard me say. Let him ask himself if he could confront the uncertain future with my cheerful submission and my steadfast hope."

He intrusted me with that message, and gave me his hand. So we parted.

I agreed with him, I admired him; but my faith seemed to want sustaining power, as compared with his faith. On his own showing (as it appeared to me), there would be two forces in a state of conflict in the child's nature as she grew up--inherited evil against inculcated good. Try as I might, I failed to feel the Minister's comforting conviction as to which of the two would win.

A FEW days after the good man had left us, I met with a serious accident, caused by a false step on the stone stairs of the prison.

The long illness which followed this misfortune, and my removal afterward (in the interests of my recovery) to a milder climate than the climate of England, obliged me to confide the duties of governor of the prison to a representative. I was absent from my post for rather more than a year. During this interval no news reached me from my reverend friend.

Having returned to the duties of my office, I thought of writing to the Minister. While the proposed letter was still in contemplation, I was informed that a lady wished to see me. She sent in her card. My visitor proved to be the Minister's wife.

I observed her with no ordinary attention when she entered the room.

Her dress was simple; her scanty light hair, so far as I could see it under her bonnet, was dressed with taste. The paleness of her lips, and the faded color in her face, suggested that she was certainly not in good health. Two peculiarities struck me in her personal appearance. I never remembered having seen any other person with such a singularly narrow and slanting forehead as this lady presented; and I was impressed, not at all agreeably, by the flashing shifting expression in her eyes. On the other hand, let me own that I was powerfully attracted and interested by the beauty of her voice. Its fine variety of compass, and its musical resonance of tone, fell with such enchantment on the ear, that I should have liked to put a book of poetry into her hand, and to have heard her read it in summer-time, accompanied by the music of a rocky stream.

The object of her visit--so far as she explained it at the outset--appeared to be to offer her congratulations on my recovery, and to tell me that her husband had assumed the charge of a church in a large town not far from her birthplace.

Even those commonplace words were made interesting by her delicious voice. But however sensitive to sweet sounds a man may be, there are limits to his capacity for deceiving himself--especially when he happens to be enlightened by experience of humanity within the walls of a prison. I had, it may be remembered, already doubted the lady's good temper, judging from her husband's over-wrought description of her virtues. Her eyes looked at me furtively; and her manner, gracefully self-possessed as it was, suggested that she had something of a delicate, or disagreeable, nature to say to me, and that she was at a loss how to approach the subject so as to produce the right impression on my mind at the outset. There was a momentary silence between us. For the sake of saying something, I asked how she and the Minister liked their new place of residence.

"Our new place of residence," she answered, "has been made interesting by a very unexpected event--an event (how shall I describe it?) which has increased our happiness and enlarged our family circle."

There she stopped: expecting me, as I fancied, to guess what she meant. A woman, and that woman a mother, might have fulfilled her anticipations. A man, and that man not listening attentively, was simply puzzled.

"Pray excuse my stupidity," I said; "I don't quite understand you."

The lady's temper looked at me out of the lady's shifting eyes, and hid itself again in a moment. She set herself right in my estimation by taking the whole blame of our little misunderstanding on her own innocent shoulders.

"I ought to have spoken more plainly," she said. "Let me try what I can do now. After many years of disappointment in my married life, it has pleased Providence to bestow on me the happiness--the inexpressible happiness--of being a mother. My baby is a sweet little girl; and my one regret is that I cannot nurse her myself."

My languid interest in the Minister's wife was not stimulated by the announcement of this domestic event.

I felt no wish to see the "sweet little girl"; I was not even reminded of another example of long-deferred maternity, which had occurred within the limits of my own family circle. All my sympathies attached themselves to the sad little figure of the adopted child. I remembered the poor baby on my knee, enchanted by the ticking of my watch--I thought of her, peacefully and prettily asleep under the horrid shelter of the condemned cell--and it is hardly too much to say that my heart was heavy, when I compared her prospects with the prospects of her baby-rival. Kind as he was, conscientious as he was, could the Minister be expected to admit to an equal share in his love the child endeared to him as a father, and the child who merely reminded him of an act of mercy? As for his wife, it seemed the merest waste of time to put her state of feeling (placed between the two children) to the test of inquiry. I tried the useless experiment, nevertheless.

"It is pleasant to think," I began, "that your other daughter--"

She interrupted me, with the utmost gentleness: "Do you mean the child that my husband was foolish enough to adopt?"

"Say rather fortunate enough to adopt," I persisted. "As your own little girl grows up, she will want a playfellow. And she will find a playfellow in that other child, whom the good Minister has taken for his own."

"No, my dear sir--not if I can prevent it."

The contrast between the cruelty of her intention, and the musical beauty of the voice which politely expressed it in those words, really startled me. I was at a loss how to answer her, at the very time when I ought to have been most ready to speak.

"You must surely understand," she went on, "that we don't want another person's child, now we have a little darling of our own?"

"Does your husband agree with you in that view?" I asked.

"Oh dear, no! He said what you said just now, and (oddly enough) almost in the same words. But I don't at all despair of persuading him to change his mind--and you can help me."

She made that audacious assertion with such an appearance of feeling perfectly sure of me, that my politeness gave way under the strain laid on it. "What do you mean?" I asked sharply.

Not in the least impressed by my change of manner, she took from the pocket of her dress a printed paper. "You will find what I mean there," she replied--and put the paper into my hand.

It was an appeal to the charitable public, occasioned by the enlargement of an orphan-asylum, with which I had been connected for many years. What she meant was plain enough now. I said nothing: I only looked at her.

Pleased to find that I was clever enough to guess what she meant, on this occasion, the Minister's wife informed me that the circumstances were all in our favor. She still persisted in taking me into partnership--the circumstances were in our favor.

"In two years more," she explained, "the child of that detestable creature who was hanged--do you know, I cannot even look at the little wretch without thinking of the gallows?--will be old enough (with your interest to help us) to be received into the asylum. What a relief it will be to get rid of that child! And how hard I shall work at canvassing for subscribers' votes! Your name will be a tower of strength when I use it as a reference. Pardon me--you are not looking so pleasantly as usual. Do you see some obstacles in our way?"

"I see two obstacles."

"What can they possibly be?"

For the second time, my politeness gave way under the strain laid on it. "You know perfectly well," I said, "what one of the obstacles is."

"Am I to understand that you contemplate any serious resistance on the part of my husband?"

"Certainly!"

She was unaffectedly amused by my simplicity.

"Are you a single man?" she asked.

"I am a widower."

"Then your experience ought to tell you that I know every weak point in the Minister's character. I can tell him, on your authority, that the hateful child will be placed in competent and kindly hands--and I have my own sweet baby to plead for me. With these advantages in my favor, do you actually suppose I can fail to make my way of thinking his way of thinking? You must have forgotten your own married life! Suppose we go on to the second of your two obstacles. I hope it will be better worth considering than the first."

"The second obstacle will not disappoint you," I answered; "I am the obstacle, this time."

"You refuse to help me?"

"Positively."

"Perhaps reflection may alter your resolution?"

"Reflection will do nothing of the kind."

"You are rude, sir!"

"In speaking to you, madam, I have no alternative but to speak plainly."

She rose. Her shifting eyes, for once, looked at me steadily.

"What sort of enemy have I made of you?" she asked. "A passive enemy who is content with refusing to help me? Or an active enemy who will write to my husband?"

"It depends entirely," I told her, "on what your husband does. If he questions me about you, I shall tell him the truth."

"And if not?"

"In that case, I shall hope to forget that you ever favored me with a visit."

In making this reply I was guiltless of any malicious intention. What evil interpretation she placed on my words it is impossible for me to say; I can only declare that some intolerable sense of injury hurried her into an outbreak of rage. Her voice, strained for the first time, lost its tuneful beauty of tone.

"Come and see us in two years' time," she burst out--"and discover the orphan of the gallows in our house if you can! If your Asylum won't take her, some other Charity will. Ha, Mr. Governor, I deserve my disappointment! I ought to have remembered that you are only a jailer after all. And what is a jailer? Proverbially a brute. Do you hear that? A brute!"

Her strength suddenly failed her. She dropped back into the chair from which she had risen, with a faint cry of pain. A ghastly pallor stole over her face. There was wine on the sideboard; I filled a glass. She refused to take it. At that time in the day, the Doctor's duties required his attendance in the prison. I instantly sent for him. After a moment's look at her, he took the wine out of my hand, and held the glass to her lips.

"Drink it," he said. She still refused. "Drink it," he reiterated, "or you will die."

That frightened her; she drank the wine. The Doctor waited for a while with his fingers on her pulse. "She will do now," he said.

"Can I go?" she asked.

"Go wherever you please, madam--so long as you don't go upstairs in a hurry."

She smiled: "I understand you, sir--and thank you for your advice."

I asked the Doctor, when we were alone, what made him tell her not to go upstairs in a hurry.

"What I felt," he answered, "when I had my fingers on her pulse. You heard her say that she understood me."

"Yes; but I don't know what she meant."

"She meant, probably, that her own doctor had warned her as I did."

"Something seriously wrong with her health?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"Heart."

A WEEK had passed, since the Minister's wife had left me, when I received a letter from the Minister himself.

After surprising me, as he innocently supposed, by announcing the birth of his child, he mentioned some circumstances connected with that event, which I now heard for the first time.

"Within an easy journey of the populous scene of my present labors," he wrote, "there is a secluded country village called Low Lanes. The rector of the place is my wife's brother. Before the birth of our infant, he had asked his sister to stay for a while at his house; and the doctor thought she might safely be allowed to accept the invitation. Through some error in the customary calculations, as I suppose, the child was born unexpectedly at the rectory; and the ceremony of baptism was performed at the church, under circumstances which I am not able to relate within the limits of a letter: Let me only say that I allude to this incident without any sectarian bitterness of feeling--for I am no enemy to the Church of England. You have no idea what treasures of virtue and treasures of beauty maternity has revealed in my wife's sweet nature. Other mothers, in her proud position, might find their love cooling toward the poor child whom we have adopted. But my household is irradiated by the presence of an angel, who gives an equal share in her affections to the two little ones alike."

In this semi-hysterical style of writing, the poor man unconsciously told me how cunningly and how cruelly his wife was deceiving him.

I longed to exhibit that wicked woman in her true character--but what could I do? She must have been so favored by circumstances as to be able to account for her absence from home, without exciting the slightest suspicion of the journey which she had really taken, if I declared in my reply to the Minister's letter that I had received her in my rooms, and if I repeated the conversation that had taken place, what would the result be? She would find an easy refuge in positive denial of the truth--and, in that case, which of us would her infatuated husband believe?

The one part of the letter which I read with some satisfaction was the end of it.

I was here informed that the Minister's plans for concealing the parentage of his adopted daughter had proved to be entirely successful. The members of the new domestic household believed the two children to be infant-sisters. Neither was there any danger of the adopted child being identified (as the oldest child of the two) by consultation of the registers.

Before he left our town, the Minister had seen for himself that no baptismal name had been added, after the birth of the daughter of the murderess had been registered, and that no entry of baptism existed in the registers kept in places of worship. He drew the inference--in all probability a true inference, considering the characters of the parents--that the child had never been baptized; and he performed the ceremony privately, abstaining, for obvious reasons, from adding her Christian name to the imperfect register of her birth. "I am not aware," he wrote, "whether I have, or have not, committed an offense against the Law. In any case, I may hope to have made atonement by obedience to the Gospel."

Six weeks passed, and I heard from my reverend friend once more.

His second letter presented a marked contrast to the first. It was written in sorrow and anxiety, to inform me of an alarming change for the worse in his wife's health. I showed the letter to my medical colleague. After reading it he predicted the event that might be expected, in two words:--Sudden death.

On the next occasion when I heard from the Minister, the Doctor's grim reply proved to be a prophecy fulfilled.

When we address expressions of condolence to bereaved friends, the principles of popular hypocrisy sanction indiscriminate lying as a duty which we owe to the dead--no matter what their lives may have been--because they are dead. Within my own little sphere, I have always been silent, when I could not offer to afflicted persons expressions of sympathy which I honestly felt. To have condoled with the Minister on the loss that he had sustained by the death of a woman, self-betrayed to me as shamelessly deceitful, and pitilessly determined to reach her own cruel ends, would have been to degrade myself by telling a deliberate lie. I expressed in my answer all that an honest man naturally feels, when he is writing to a friend in distress; carefully abstaining from any allusion to the memory of his wife, or to the place which her death had left vacant in his household. My letter, I am sorry to say, disappointed and offended him. He wrote to me no more, until years had passed, and time had exerted its influence in producing a more indulgent frame of mind. These letters of a later date have been preserved, and will probably be used, at the right time, for purposes of explanation with which I may be connected in the future.

The correspondent whom I had now lost was succeeded by a gentleman entirely unknown to me.

Those reasons which induced me to conceal the names of persons, while I was relating events in the prison, do not apply to correspondence with a stranger writing from another place. I may, therefore, mention that Mr. Dunboyne, of Fairmount, on the west coast of Ireland, was the writer of the letter now addressed to me. He proved, to my surprise, to be one of the relations whom the Prisoner under sentence of death had not cared to see, when I offered her the opportunity of saying farewell. Mr. Dunboyne was a brother-in-law of the murderess. He had married her sister.

His wife, he informed me, had died in childbirth, leaving him but one consolation--a boy, who already recalled all that was brightest and best in his lost mother. The father was naturally anxious that the son should never become acquainted with the disgrace that had befallen the family.

The letter then proceeded in these terms:

"I heard yesterday, for the first time, by means of an old newspaper-cutting sent to me by a friend, that the miserable woman who suffered the ignominy of public execution has left an infant child. Can you tell me what has become of the orphan? If this little girl is, as I fear, not well provided for, I only do what my wife would have done if she had lived, by offering to make the child's welfare my especial care. I am willing to place her in an establishment well known to me, in which she will be kindly treated, well educated, and fitted to earn her own living honorably in later life.

"If you feel some surprise at finding that my good intentions toward this ill-fated niece of mine do not go to the length of receiving her as a member of my own family, I beg to submit some considerations which may perhaps weigh with you as they have weighed with me.

"In the first place, there is at least a possibility--however carefully I might try to conceal it--that the child's parentage would sooner or later be discovered. In the second place (and assuming that the parentage had been successfully concealed), if this girl and my boy grew up together, there is another possibility to be reckoned with: they might become attached to each other. Does the father live who would allow his son ignorantly to marry the daughter of a convicted murderess? I should have no alternative but to part them cruelly by revealing the truth." The letter ended with some complimentary expressions addressed to myself. And the question was: how ought I to answer it?

My correspondent had strongly impressed me in his favor; I could not doubt that he was an honorable man. But the interest of the Minister in keeping his own benevolent action secure from the risk of discovery--increased as that interest was by the filial relations of the two children toward him, now publicly established--had, as I could not doubt, the paramount claim on me. The absolutely safe course to take was to admit no one, friend or stranger, to our confidence. I replied, expressing sincere admiration of Mr. Dunboyne's motives, and merely informing him that the child was already provided for.

After that, I heard no more of the Irish gentleman.

It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that I kept the Minister in ignorance of my correspondence with Mr. Dunboyne. I was too well acquainted with my friend's sensitive and self-tormenting nature to let him know that a relative of the murderess was living, and was aware that she had left a child.

A last event remains to be related, before I close these pages.

During the year of which I am now writing, our Chaplain added one more to the many examples that I have seen of his generous readiness to serve his friends. He had arranged to devote his annual leave of absence to a tour among the English Lakes, when he received a letter from a clergyman resident in London, whom he had known from the time when they had been school-fellows. This old friend wrote under circumstances of the severest domestic distress, which made it absolutely necessary that he should leave London for a while. Having failed to find a representative who could relieve him of his clerical duties, he applied to the Chaplain to recommend a clergyman who might be in a position to help him. My excellent colleague gave up his holiday-plans without hesitation, and went to London himself.

On his return, I asked if he had seen anything of some acquaintances of his and of mine, who were then visitors to the metropolis. He smiled significantly when he answered me.

"I have a card to deliver from an acquaintance whom you have not mentioned," he said; "and I rather think it will astonish you."

It simply puzzled me. When he gave me the card, this is what I found printed on it:

"MRS. TENERUGGEN (OF SOUTH BEVELAND)."

"Well?" said the Chaplain.

"Well," I answered; "I never even heard of Mrs. Tenbruggen, of South Beveland. Who is she?"

"I married the lady to a foreign gentleman, only last week, at my friend's church," the Chaplain replied. "Perhaps you may remember her maiden name?"

He mentioned the name of the dangerous creature who had first presented herself to me, in charge of the Prisoner's child--otherwise Miss Elizabeth Chance. The reappearance of this woman on the scene--although she was only represented by her card--caused me a feeling of vague uneasiness, so contemptibly superstitious in its nature that I now remember it with shame. I asked a stupid question:

"How did it happen?"

"In the ordinary course of such things," my friend said. "They were married by license, in their parish church. The bridegroom was a fine tall man, with a bold eye and a dashing manner. The bride and I recognized each other directly. When Miss Chance had become Mrs. Tenbruggen, she took me aside, and gave me her card. 'Ask the Governor to accept it,' she said, 'in remembrance of the time when he took me for a nursemaid. Tell him I am married to a Dutch gentleman of high family. If he ever comes to Holland, we shall be glad to see him in our residence at South Beveland.' There is her message to you, repeated word for word."

"I am glad she is going to live out of England."

"Why? Surely you have no reason to fear her?"

"None whatever."

"You are thinking, perhaps, of somebody else?"

I was thinking of the Minister; but it seemed to be safest not to say so.

My pen is laid aside, and my many pages of writing have been sent to their destination. What I undertook to do, is now done. To take a metaphor from the stage--the curtain falls here on the Governor and the Prison.

WE both said good-night, and went up to our room with a new object in view. By our father's advice we had resolved on keeping diaries, for the first time in our lives, and had pledged ourselves to begin before we went to bed.

Slowly and silently and lazily, my sister sauntered to her end of the room and seated herself at her writing-table. On the desk lay a nicely bound book, full of blank pages. The word "Journal" was printed on it in gold letters, and there was fitted to the covers a bright brass lock and key. A second journal, exactly similar in every respect to the first, was placed on the writing-table at my end of the room. I opened my book. The sight of the blank leaves irritated me; they were so smooth, so spotless, so entirely ready to do their duty. I took too deep a dip of ink, and began the first entry in my diary by making a blot. This was discouraging. I got up, and looked out of window.

"Helena!"

My sister's voice could hardly have addressed me in a more weary tone, if her pen had been at work all night, relating domestic events. "Well!" I said. "What is it?"

"Have you done already?" she asked.

I showed her the blot. My sister Eunice (the strangest as well as the dearest of girls) always blurts out what she has in her mind at the time. She fixed her eyes gravely on my spoiled page, and said: "That comforts me." I crossed the room, and looked at her book. She had not even summoned energy enough to make a blot. "What will papa think of us," she said, "if we don't begin to-night?"

"Why not begin," I suggested, "by writing down what he said, when he gave us our journals? Those wise words of advice will be in their proper place on the first page of the new books."

Not at all a demonstrative girl naturally; not ready with her tears, not liberal with her caresses, not fluent in her talk, Eunice was affected by my proposal in a manner wonderful to see. She suddenly developed into an excitable person--I declare she kissed me. "Oh," she burst out, "how clever you are! The very thing to write about; I'll do it directly."

She really did it directly; without once stopping to consider, without once waiting to ask my advice. Line after line, I heard her noisy pen hurrying to the bottom of a first page, and getting three-parts of the way toward the end of a second page, before she closed her diary. I reminded her that she had not turned the key, in the lock which was intended to keep her writing private.

"It's not worth while," she answered. "Anybody who cares to do it may read what I write. Good-night."

The singular change which I had noticed in her began to disappear, when she set about her preparations for bed. I noticed the old easy indolent movements again, and that regular and deliberate method of brushing her hair, which I can never contemplate without feeling a stupefying influence that has helped me to many a delicious night's sleep. She said her prayers in her favorite corner of the room, and laid her head on the pillow with the luxurious little sigh which announces that she is falling asleep. This reappearance of her usual habits was really a relief to me. Eunice in a state of excitement is Eunice exhibiting an unnatural spectacle.

The next thing I did was to take the liberty which she had already sanctioned--I mean the liberty of reading what she had written. Here it is, copied exactly:

"I am not half so fond of anybody as I am of papa. He is always kind, he is always right. I love him, I love him, I love him.

"But this is not how I meant to begin. I must tell how he talked to us; I wish he was here to tell it himself.

"He said to me: 'You are getting lazier than ever, Eunice.' He said to Helena: 'You are feeling the influence of Eunice's example.' He said to both of us: 'You are too ready, my dear children, to sit with your hands on your laps, looking at nothing and thinking of nothing; I want to try a new way of employing your leisure time.'

"He opened a parcel on the table. He made each of us a present of a beautiful book, called 'Journal.' He said: 'When you have nothing to do, my dears, in the evening, employ yourselves in keeping a diary of the events of the day. It will be a useful record in many ways, and a good moral discipline for young girls.' Helena said: 'Oh, thank you!' I said the same, but not so cheerfully.

"The truth is, I feel out of spirits now if I think of papa; I am not easy in my mind about him. When he is very much interested, there is a quivering in his face which I don't remember in past times. He seems to have got older and thinner, all on a sudden. He shouts (which he never used to do) when he threatens sinners at sermon-time. Being in dreadful earnest about our souls, he is of course obliged to speak of the devil; but he never used to hit the harmless pulpit cushion with his fist as he does now. Nobody seems to have seen these things but me; and now I have noticed them what ought I to do? I don't know; I am certain of nothing, except what I have put in at the top of page one: I love him, I love him, I love him."

There this very curious entry ended. It was easy enough to discover the influence which had made my slow-minded sister so ready with her memory and her pen--so ready, in short, to do anything and everything, provided her heart was in it, and her father was in it.

But Eunice is wrong, let me tell her, in what she says of myself.

I, too, have seen the sad change in my father; but I happen to know that he dislikes having it spoken of at home, and I have kept my painful discoveries to myself. Unhappily, the best medical advice is beyond our reach. The one really competent doctor in this place is known to be an infidel. But for that shocking obstacle I might have persuaded my father to see him. As for the other two doctors whom he has consulted, at different times, one talked about suppressed gout, and the other told him to take a year's holiday and enjoy himself on the Continent.

The clock has just struck twelve. I have been writing and copying till my eyes are heavy, and I want to follow Eunice's example and sleep as soundly as she does. We have made a strange beginning of this journalizing experiment. I wonder how long it will go on, and what will come of it.

I begin to be afraid that I am as stupid--no; that is not a nice word to use--let me say as simple as dear Eunice. A diary means a record of the events of the day; and not one of the events of yesterday appears in my sister's journal or in mine. Well, it is easy to set that mistake right. Our lives are so dull (but I would not say so in my father's hearing for the world) that the record of one day will be much the same as the record of another.

After family prayers and breakfast I suffer my customary persecution at the hands of the cook. That is to say, I am obliged, being the housekeeper, to order what we have to eat. Oh, how I hate inventing dinners! and how I admire the enviable slowness of mind and laziness of body which have saved Eunice from undertaking the worries of housekeeping in her turn! She can go and work in her garden, while I am racking my invention to discover variety in dishes without overstepping the limits of economy. I suppose I may confess it privately to myself--how sorry I am not to have been born a man!

My next employment leads me to my father's study, to write under his dictation. I don't complain of this; it flatters my pride to feel that I am helping so great a man. At the same time, I do notice that here again Eunice's little defects have relieved her of another responsibility. She can neither keep dictated words in her memory, nor has she ever been able to learn how to put in her stops.

After the dictation, I have an hour's time left for practicing music. My sister comes in from the garden, with her pencil and paint-box, and practices drawing. Then we go out for a walk--a delightful walk, if my father goes too. He has something always new to tell us, suggested by what we pass on the way. Then, dinner-time comes--not always a pleasant part of the day to me. Sometimes I hear paternal complaints (always gentle complaints) of my housekeeping; sometimes my sister (I won't say the greedy sister) tells me I have not given her enough to eat. Poor father! Dear Eunice!

Dinner having reached its end, we stroll in the garden when the weather is fine. When it rains, we make flannel petticoats for poor old women. What a horrid thing old age is to look at! To be ugly, to be helpless, to be miserably unfit for all the pleasures of life--I hope I shall not live to be an old woman. What would my father say if he saw this? For his sake, to say nothing of my own feelings, I shall do well if I make it a custom to use the lock of my journal.

Our next occupation is to join the Scripture class for girls, and to help the teacher. This is a good discipline for Eunice's temper, and--oh, I don't deny it!--for my temper, too. I may long to box the ears of the whole class, but it is my duty to keep a smiling face and to be a model of patience. From the Scripture class we sometimes go to my father's lecture. At other times, we may amuse ourselves as well as we can till the tea is ready. After tea, we read books which instruct us, poetry and novels being forbidden. When we are tired of the books we talk. When supper is over, we have prayers again, and we go to bed. There is our day. Oh, dear me! there is our day.

And how has Eunice succeeded in her second attempt at keeping a diary? Here is what she has written. It has one merit that nobody can deny--it is soon read:

"I hope papa will excuse me; I have nothing to write about to-day."

Over and over again I have tried to point out to my sister the absurdity of calling her father by the infantile nickname of papa. I have reminded her that she is (in years, at least) no longer a child. "Why don't you call him father, as I do?" I asked only the other day.

She made an absurd reply: "I used to call him papa when I was a little girl."

"That," I reminded her, "doesn't justify you in calling him papa now."

And she actually answered: "Yes it does." What a strange state of mind! And what a charming girl, in spite of her mind!

The morning post has brought with it a promise of some little variety in our lives--or, to speak more correctly, in the life of my sister.

Our new and nice friends, the Staveleys, have written to invite Eunice to pay them a visit at their house in London. I don't complain at being left at home. It would be unfilial, indeed, if we both of us forsook our father; and last year it was my turn to receive the first invitation, and to enjoy the change of scene. The Staveleys are excellent people--strictly pious members of the Methodist Connection--and exceedingly kind to my sister and me. But it was just as well for my moral welfare that I ended my visit to our friends when I did. With my fondness for music, I felt the temptation of the Evil One trying me, when I saw placards in the street announcing that the Italian Opera was open. I had no wish to be a witness of the shameful and sinful dancing which goes on (I am told) at the opera; but I did feel my principles shaken when I thought of the wonderful singers and the entrancing music. And this, when I knew what an atmosphere of wickedness people breathe who enter a theater! I reflect with horror on what might have happened if I had remained a little longer in London.

Helping Eunice to pack up, I put her journal into the box.

"You will find something to write about now," I told her. "While I record everything that happens at home, you will keep your diary of all that you do in London, and when you come back we will show each other what we have written." My sister is a dear creature. "I don't feel sure of being able to do it," she answered; "but I promise to try." Good Eunice!

THE air of London feels very heavy. There is a nasty smell of smoke in London. There are too many people in London. They seem to be mostly people in a hurry. The head of a country girl, when she goes into the streets, turns giddy--I suppose through not being used to the noise.

I do hope that it is London that has put me out of temper. Otherwise, it must be I myself who am ill-tempered. I have not yet been one whole day in the Staveleys' house, and they have offended me already. I don't want Helena to hear of this from other people, and then to ask me why I concealed it from her. We are to read each other's journals when we are both at home again. Let her see what I have to say for myself here.

There are seven Staveleys in all: Mr. and Mrs. (two); three young Masters (five); two young Misses (seven). An eldest miss and the second young Master are the only ones at home at the present time.

Mr., Mrs., and Miss kissed me when I arrived. Young Master only shook hands. He looked as if he would have liked to kiss me too. Why shouldn't he? It wouldn't have mattered. I don't myself like kissing. What is the use of it? Where is the pleasure of it?

Mrs. was so glad to see me; she took hold of me by both hands. She said: "My dear child, you are improving. You were wretchedly thin when I saw you last. Now you are almost as well-developed as your sister. I think you are prettier than your sister." Mr. didn't agree to that. He and his wife began to dispute about me before my face. I do call that an aggravating thing to endure.

Mr. said: "She hasn't got her sister's pretty gray eyes."

Mrs. said; "She has got pretty brown eyes, which are just as good."

Mr. said: "You can't compare her complexion with Helena's."

Mrs. said: "I like Eunice's pale complexion. So delicate."

Young Miss struck in: "I admire Helena's hair--light brown."

Young Master took his turn: "I prefer Eunice's hair--dark brown."

Mr. opened his great big mouth, and asked a question: "Which of you two sisters is the oldest? I forget."

Mrs. answered for me: "Helena is the oldest; she told us so when she was here last."

I really could not stand that. "You must be mistaken," I burst out.

"Certainly not, my dear."

"Then Helena was mistaken." I was unwilling to say of my sister that she had been deceiving them, though it did seem only too likely.

Mr. and Mrs. looked at each other. Mrs. said: "You seem to be very positive, Eunice. Surely, Helena ought to know."

I said: "Helena knows a good deal; but she doesn't know which of us is the oldest of the two."

Mr. put in another question: "Do you know?"

"No more than Helena does."

Mrs. said: "Don't you keep birthdays?"

I said: "Yes; we keep both our birthdays on the same day."

"On what day?"

"The first day of the New Year."

Mr. tried again: "You can't possibly be twins?"

"I don't know."

"Perhaps Helena knows?"

"Not she!"

Mrs. took the next question out of her husband's mouth: "Come, come, my dear! you must know how old you are."

"Yes; I do know that. I'm eighteen."

"And how old is Helena?"

"Helena's eighteen."

Mrs. turned round to Mr.: "Do you hear that?"

Mr. said: "I shall write to her father, and ask what it means."

I said: "Papa will only tell you what he told us--years ago."

"What did your father say?"

"He said he had added our two ages together, and he meant to divide the product between us. It's so long since, I don't remember what the product was then. But I'll tell you what the product is now. Our two ages come to thirty-six. Half thirty-six is eighteen. I get one half, and Helena gets the other. When we ask what it means, and when friends ask what it means, papa has got the same answer for everybody, 'I have my reasons.' That's all he says--and that's all I say."

I had no intention of making Mr. angry, but he did get angry. He left off speaking to me by my Christian name; he called me by my surname. He said: "Let me tell you, Miss Gracedieu, it is not becoming in a young lady to mystify her elders."

I had heard that it was respectful in a young lady to call an old gentleman, Sir, and to say, If you please. I took care to be respectful now. "If you please, sir, write to papa. You will find that I have spoken the truth."

A woman opened the door, and said to Mrs. Staveley: "Dinner, ma'am." That stopped this nasty exhibition of our tempers. We had a very good dinner.

The next day I wrote to Helena, asking her what she had really said to the Staveleys about her age and mine, and telling her what I had said. I found it too great a trial of my patience to wait till she could see what I had written about the dispute in my journal. The days, since then, have passed, and I have been too lazy and stupid to keep my diary.

To-day it is different. My head is like a dark room with the light let into it. I remember things; I think I can go on again.

We have religious exercises in this house, morning and evening, just as we do at home. (Not to be compared with papa's religious exercises.) Two days ago his answer came to Mr. Staveley's letter. He did just what I had expected--said I had spoken truly, and disappointed the family by asking to be excused if he refrained from entering into explanations. Mr. said: "Very odd;" and Mrs. agreed with him. Young Miss is not quite as friendly now as she was at first. And young Master was impudent enough to ask me if "I had got religion." To conclude the list of my worries, I received an angry answer from Helena. "Nobody but a simpleton," she wrote, "would have contradicted me as you did. Who but you could have failed to see that papa's strange objection to let it be known which of us is the elder makes us ridiculous before other people? My presence of mind prevented that. You ought to have been grateful, and held your tongue." Perhaps Helena is right--but I don't feel it so.

On Sunday we went to chapel twice. We also had a sermon read at home, and a cold dinner. In the evening, a hot dispute on religion between Mr. Staveley and his son. I don't blame them. After being pious all day long on Sunday, I have myself felt my piety give way toward evening.

There is something pleasant in prospect for to-morrow. All London is going just now to the exhibition of pictures. We are going with all London.

I don't know what is the matter with me tonight. I have positively been to bed, without going to sleep! After tossing and twisting and trying all sorts of positions, I am so angry with myself that I have got up again. Rather than do nothing, I have opened my ink-bottle, and I mean to go on with my journal.

Now I think of it, it seems likely that the exhibition of works of art may have upset me.

I found a dreadfully large number of pictures, matched by a dreadfully large number of people to look at them. It is not possible for me to write about what I saw: there was too much of it. Besides, the show disappointed me. I would rather write about a disagreement (oh, dear, another dispute!) I had with Mrs. Staveley. The cause of it was a famous artist; not himself, but his works. He exhibited four pictures--what they call figure subjects. Mrs. Staveley had a pencil. At every one of the great man's four pictures, she made a big mark of admiration on her catalogue. At the fourth one, she spoke to me: "Perfectly beautiful, Eunice, isn't it?"

I said I didn't know. She said: "You strange girl, what do you mean by that?"

It would have been rude not to have given the best answer I could find. I said: "I never saw the flesh of any person's face like the flesh in the faces which that man paints. He reminds me of wax-work. Why does he paint the same waxy flesh in all four of his pictures? I don't see the same colored flesh in all the faces about us." Mrs. Staveley held up her hand, by way of stopping me. She said: "Don't speak so loud, Eunice; you are only exposing your own ignorance."

A voice behind us joined in. The voice said: "Excuse me, Mrs. Staveley, if I expose my ignorance. I entirely agree with the young lady."

I felt grateful to the person who took my part, just when I was at a loss what to say for myself, and I looked round. The person was a young gentleman.

He wore a beautiful blue frock-coat, buttoned up. I like a frock-coat to be buttoned up. He had light-colored trousers and gray gloves and a pretty cane. I like light-colored trousers and gray gloves and a pretty cane. What color his eyes were is more than I can say; I only know they made me hot when they looked at me. Not that I mind being made hot; it is surely better than being made cold. He and Mrs. Staveley shook hands.

They seemed to be old friends. I wished I had been an old friend--not for any bad reason, I hope. I only wanted to shake hands, too. What Mrs. Staveley said to him escaped me, somehow. I think the picture escaped me also; I don't remember noticing anything except the young gentleman, especially when he took off his hat to me. He looked at me twice before he went away. I got hot again. I said to Mrs. Staveley: "Who is he?"

She laughed at me. I said again: "Who is he?" She said: "He is young Mr. Dunboyne." I said: "Does he live in London?" She laughed again. I said again: "Does he live in London?" She said: "He is here for a holiday; he lives with his father at Fairmount, in Ireland."

Young Mr. Dunboyne--here for a holiday--lives with his father at Fairmount, in Ireland. I have said that to myself fifty times over. And here it is, saying itself for the fifty-first time in my Journal. I must indeed be a simpleton, as Helena says. I had better go to bed again.

NOT long before I left home, I heard one of our two servants telling the other about a person who had been "bewitched." Are you bewitched when you don't understand your own self? That has been my curious case, since I returned from the picture show. This morning I took my drawing materials out of my box, and tried to make a portrait of young Mr. Dunboyne from recollection. I succeeded pretty well with his frock-coat and cane; but, try as I might, his face was beyond me. I have never drawn anything so badly since I was a little girl; I almost felt ready to cry. What a fool I am!

This morning I received a letter from papa--it was in reply to a letter that I had written to him--so kind, so beautifully expressed, so like himself, that I felt inclined to send him a confession of the strange state of feeling that has come over me, and to ask him to comfort and advise me. On second thoughts, I was afraid to do it. Afraid of papa! I am further away from understanding myself than ever.

Mr. Dunboyne paid us a visit in the afternoon. Fortunately, before we went out.

I thought I would have a good look at him; so as to know his face better than I had known it yet. Another disappointment was in store for me. Without intending it, I am sure, he did what no other young man has ever done--he made me feel confused. Instead of looking at him, I sat with my head down, and listened to his talk. His voice--this is high praise--reminded me of papa's voice. It seemed to persuade me as papa persuades his congregation. I felt quite at ease again. When he went away, we shook hands. He gave my hand a little squeeze. I gave him back the squeeze--without knowing why. When he was gone, I wished I had not done it--without knowing why, either.

I heard his Christian name for the first time to-day. Mrs. Staveley said to me: "We are going to have a dinner-party. Shall I ask Philip Dunboyne?" I said to Mrs. Staveley: "Oh, do!"

She is an old woman; her eyes are dim. At times, she can look mischievous. She looked at me mischievously now. I wished I had not been so eager to have Mr. Dunboyne asked to dinner.

A fear has come to me that I may have degraded myself. My spirits are depressed. This, as papa tells us in his sermons, is a miserable world. I am sorry I accepted the Staveleys' invitation. I am sorry I went to see the pictures. When that young man comes to dinner, I shall say I have got a headache, and shall stop upstairs by myself. I don't think I like his Christian name. I hate London. I hate everybody.

What I wrote up above, yesterday, is nonsense. I think his Christian name is perfect. I like London. I love everybody.

He came to dinner to-day. I sat next to him. How beautiful a dress-coat is, and a white cravat! We talked. He wanted to know what my Christian name was. I was so pleased when I found he was one of the few people who like it. His hair curls naturally. In color, it is something between my hair and Helena's. He wears his beard. How manly! It curls naturally, like his hair; it smells deliciously of some perfume which is new to me. He has white hands; his nails look as if he polished them; I should like to polish my nails if I knew how. Whatever I said, he agreed with me; I felt satisfied with my own conversation, for the first time in my life. Helena won't find me a simpleton when I go home. What exquisite things dinner-parties are!

My sister told me (when we said good-by) to be particular in writing down my true opinion of the Staveleys. Helena wishes to compare what she thinks of them with what I think of them.

My opinion of Mr. Staveley is--I don't like him. My opinion of Miss Staveley is--I can't endure her. As for Master Staveley, my clever sister will understand that he is beneath notice. But, oh, what a wonderful woman Mrs. Staveley is! We went out together, after luncheon today, for a walk in Kensington Gardens. Never have I heard any conversation to compare with Mrs. Staveley's. Helena shall enjoy it here, at second hand. I am quite changed in two things. First: I think more of myself than I ever did before. Second: writing is no longer a difficulty to me. I could fill a hundred journals, without once stopping to think.

Mrs. Staveley began nicely; "I suppose, Eunice, you have often been told that you have a good figure, and that you walk well?"

I said: "Helena thinks my figure is better than my face. But do I really walk well? Nobody ever told me that."

She answered: "Philip Dunboyne thinks so. He said to me, 'I resist the temptation because I might be wanting in respect if I gave way to it. But I should like to follow her when she goes out--merely for the pleasure of seeing her walk.' "

I stood stockstill. I said nothing. When you are as proud as a peacock (which never happened to me before), I find you can't move and can't talk. You can only enjoy yourself.

Kind Mrs. Staveley had more things to tell me. She said: "I am interested in Philip. I lived near Fairmount in the time before I was married; and in those days he was a child. I want him to marry a charming girl, and be happy."

What made me think directly of Miss Staveley? What made me mad to know if she was the charming girl? I was bold enough to ask the question. Mrs. Staveley turned to me with that mischievous look which I have noticed already. I felt as if I had been running at the top of my speed, and had not got my breath again, yet.

But this good motherly friend set me at my ease. She explained herself: "Philip is not much liked, poor fellow, in our house. My husband considers him to be weak and vain and fickle. And my daughter agrees with her father. There are times when she is barely civil to Philip. He is too good-natured to complain, but I see it. Tell me, my dear, do you like Philip?"

"Of course I do!" Out it came in those words, before I could stop it. Was there something unbecoming to a young lady in saying what I had just said? Mrs. Staveley seemed to be more amused than angry with me. She took my arm kindly, and led me along with her. "My dear, you are as clear as crystal, and as true as steel. You are a favorite of mine already."

What a delightful woman! as I said just now. I asked if she really liked me as well as she liked my sister.

She said: "Better."

I didn't expect that, and didn't want it. Helena is my superior. She is prettier than I am, cleverer than I am, better worth liking than I am. Mrs. Staveley shifted the talk back to Philip. I ought to have said Mr. Philip. No, I won't; I shall call him Philip. If I had a heart of stone, I should feel interested in him, after what Mrs. Staveley has told me.

Such a sad story, in some respects. Mother dead; no brothers or sisters. Only the father left; he lives a dismal life on a lonely stormy coast. Not a severe old gentleman, for all that. His reasons for taking to retirement are reasons (so Mrs. Staveley says) which nobody knows. He buries himself among his books, in an immense library; and he appears to like it. His son has not been brought up like other young men, at school and college. He is a great scholar, educated at home by his father. To hear this account of his learning depressed me. It seemed to put such a distance between us. I asked Mrs. Staveley if he thought me ignorant. As long as I live I shall remember the reply: "He thinks you charming."

Any other girl would have been satisfied with this. I am the miserable creature who is always making mistakes. My stupid curiosity spoiled the charm of Mrs. Staveley's conversation. And yet it seemed to be a harmless question; I only said I should like to know what profession Philip belonged to.

Mrs. Staveley answered: "No profession."

I foolishly put a wrong meaning on this. I said: "Is he idle?"

Mrs. Staveley laughed. "My dear, he is an only son--and his father is a rich man."

That stopped me--at last.

We have enough to live on in comfort at home--no more. Papa has told us himself that he is not (and can never hope to be) a rich man. This is not the worst of it. Last year, he refused to marry a young couple, both belonging to our congregation. This was very unlike his usual kind self. Helena and I asked him for his reasons. They were reasons that did not take long to give. The young gentleman's father was a rich man. He had forbidden his son to marry a sweet girl--because she had no fortune.

I have no fortune. And Philip's father is a rich man.

The best thing I can do is to wipe my pen, and shut up my Journal, and go home by the next train.

I have a great mind to burn my Journal. It tells me that I had better not think of Philip any more.

On second thoughts, I won't destroy my Journal; I will only put it away. If I live to be an old woman, it may amuse me to open my book again, and see how foolish the poor wretch was when she was young.

What is this aching pain in my heart?

I don't remember it at any other time in my life. Is it trouble? How can I tell?--I have had so little trouble. It must be many years since I was wretched enough to cry. I don't even understand why I am crying now. My last sorrow, so far as I can remember, was the toothache. Other girls' mothers comfort them when they are wretched. If my mother had lived--it's useless to think about that. We lost her, while I and my sister were too young to understand our misfortune.

I wish I had never seen Philip.

This seems an ungrateful wish. Seeing him at the picture-show was a new enjoyment. Sitting next to him at dinner was a happiness that I don't recollect feeling, even when Papa has been most sweet and kind to me. I ought to be ashamed of myself to confess this. Shall I write to my sister? But how should she know what is the matter with me, when I don't know it myself? Besides, Helena is angry; she wrote unkindly to me when she answered my last letter.

There is a dreadful loneliness in this great house at night. I had better say my prayers, and try to sleep. If it doesn't make me feel happier, it will prevent me spoiling my Journal by dropping tears on it.

What an evening of evenings this has been! Last night it was crying that kept me awake. To-night I can't sleep for joy.

Philip called on us again to-day. He brought with him tickets for the performance of an Oratorio. Sacred music is not forbidden music among our people. Mrs. Staveley and Miss Staveley went to the concert with us. Philip and I sat next to each other.

My sister is a musician--I am nothing. That sounds bitter; but I don't mean it so. All I mean is, that I like simple little songs, which I can sing to myself by remembering the tune. There, my musical enjoyment ends. When voices and instruments burst out together by hundreds, I feel bewildered. I also get attacked by fidgets. This last misfortune is sure to overtake me when choruses are being performed. The unfortunate people employed are made to keep singing the same words, over and over and over again, till I find it a perfect misery to listen to them. The choruses were unendurable in the performance to-night. This is one of them: "Here we are all alone in the wilderness--alone in the wilderness--in the wilderness alone, alone, alone--here we are in the wilderness--alone in the wilderness--all all alone in the wilderness," and soon, till I felt inclined to call for the learned person who writes Oratorios, and beg him to give the poor music a more generous allowance of words.

Whenever I looked at Philip, I found him looking at me. Perhaps he saw from the first that the music was wearying music to my ignorant ears. With his usual delicacy he said nothing for some time. But when he caught me yawning (though I did my best to hide it, for it looked like being ungrateful for the tickets), then he could restrain himself no longer. He whispered in my ear:

"You are getting tired of this. And so am I."

"I am trying to like it," I whispered back.

"Don't try," he answered. "Let's talk."

He meant, of course, talk in whispers. We were a good deal annoyed--especially when the characters were all alone in the wilderness--by bursts of singing and playing which interrupted us at the most interesting moments. Philip persevered with a manly firmness. What could I do but follow his example--at a distance?

He said: "Is it really true that your visit to Mrs. Staveley is coming to an end?"

I answered: "It comes to an end the day after to-morrow."

"Are you sorry to be leaving your friends in London?"

What I might have said if he had made that inquiry a day earlier, when I was the most miserable creature living, I would rather not try to guess. Being quite happy as things were, I could honestly tell him I was sorry.

"You can't possibly be as sorry as I am, Eunice. May I call you by your pretty name?"

"Yes, if you please."

"Eunice!"

"Yes."

"You will leave a blank in my life when you go away--"

There another chorus stopped him, just as I was eager for more. It was such a delightfully new sensation to hear a young gentleman telling me that I had left a blank in his life. The next change in the Oratorio brought up a young lady, singing alone. Some people behind us grumbled at the smallness of her voice. We thought her voice perfect. It seemed to lend itself so nicely to our whispers.

He said: "Will you help me to think of you while you are away? I want to imagine what your life is at home. Do you live in a town or in the country?"

I told him the name of our town. When we give a person information, I have always heard that we ought to make it complete. So I mentioned our address in the town. But I was troubled by a doubt. Perhaps he preferred the country. Being anxious about this, I said: "Would you rather have heard that I live in the country?"

"Live where you may, Eunice, the place will be a favorite place of mine. Besides, your town is famous. It has a public attraction which brings visitors to it."

I made another of those mistakes which no sensible girl, in my position, would have committed. I asked if he alluded to our new market-place.

He set me right in the sweetest manner: "I alluded to a building hundreds of years older than your market-place--your beautiful cathedral."

Fancy my not having thought of the cathedral! This is what comes of being a Congregationalist. If I had belonged to the Church of England, I should have forgotten the market-place, and remembered the cathedral. Not that I want to belong to the Church of England. Papa's chapel is good enough for me.

The song sung by the lady with the small voice was so pretty that the audience encored it. Didn't Philip and I help them! With the sweetest smiles the lady sang it all over again. The people behind us left the concert.

He said: "Do you know, I take the greatest interest in cathedrals. I propose to enjoy the privilege and pleasure of seeing your cathedral early next week."

I had only to look at him to see that I was the cathedral. It was no surprise to hear next that he thought of "paying his respects to Mr. Gracedieu." He begged me to tell him what sort of reception he might hope to meet with when he called at our house. I got so excited in doing justice to papa that I quite forgot to whisper when the next question came. Philip wanted to know if Mr. Gracedieu disliked strangers. When I answered, "Oh dear, no!" I said it out loud, so that the people heard me. Cruel, cruel people! They all turned round and stared. One hideous old woman actually said, "Silence!" Miss Staveley looked disgusted. Even kind Mrs. Staveley lifted her eyebrows in astonishment.

Philip, dear Philip, protected and composed me.

He held my hand devotedly till the end of the performance. When he put us into the carriage, I was last. He whispered in my ear: "Expect me next week." Miss Staveley might be as ill-natured as she pleased, on the way home. It didn't matter what she said. The Eunice of yesterday might have been mortified and offended. The Eunice of to-day was indifferent to the sharpest things that could be said to her.

All through yesterday's delightful evening, I never once thought of Philip's father. When I woke this morning, I remembered that old Mr. Dunboyne was a rich man. I could eat no breakfast for thinking of the poor girl who was not allowed to marry her young gentleman, because she had no money.

Mrs. Staveley waited to speak to me till the rest of them had left us together. I had expected her to notice that I looked dull and dismal. No! her cleverness got at my secret in quite another way.

She said: "How do you feel after the concert? You must be hard to please indeed if you were not satisfied with the accompaniments last night."

"The accompaniments of the Oratorio?"

"No, my dear. The accompaniments of Philip."

I suppose I ought to have laughed. In my miserable state of mind, it was not to be done. I said: "I hope Mr. Dunboyne's father will not hear how kind he was to me."

Mrs. Staveley asked why.

My bitterness overflowed at my tongue. I said: "Because papa is a poor man."

"And Philip's papa is a rich man," says Mrs. Staveley, putting my own thought into words for me. "Where do you get these ideas, Eunice? Surely, you are not allowed to read novels?"

"Oh no!"

"And you have certainly never seen a play?"

"Never."

"Clear your head, child, of the nonsense that has got into it--I can't think how. Rich Mr. Dunboyne has taught his heir to despise the base act of marrying for money. He knows that Philip will meet young ladies at my house; and he has written to me on the subject of his son's choice of a wife. 'Let Philip find good principles, good temper, and good looks; and I promise beforehand to find the money.' There is what he says. Are you satisfied with Philip's father, now?"

I jumped up in a state of ecstasy. Just as I had thrown my arms round Mrs. Staveley's neck, the servant came in with a letter, and handed it to me.

Helena had written again, on this last day of my visit. Her letter was full of instructions for buying things that she wants, before I leave London. I read on quietly enough until I came to the postscript. The effect of it on me may be told in two words: I screamed. Mrs. Staveley was naturally alarmed. "Bad news?" she asked. Being quite unable to offer an opinion, I read the postscript out loud, and left her to judge for herself.

This was Helena's news from home:

"I must prepare you for a surprise, before your return. You will find a strange lady established at home. Don't suppose there is any prospect of her bidding us good-by, if we only wait long enough. She is already (with father's full approval) as much a member of the family as we are. You shall form your own unbiased opinion of her, Eunice. For the present, I say no more."

I asked Mrs. Staveley what she thought of my news from home. She said: "Your father approves of the lady, my dear. I suppose it's good news."

But Mrs. Staveley did not look as if she believed in the good news, for all that.

TO-DAY I went as usual to the Scripture-class for girls. It was harder work than ever, teaching without Eunice to help me. Indeed, I felt lonely all day without my sister. When I got home, I rather hoped that some friend might have come to see us, and have been asked to stay to tea. The housemaid opened the door to me. I asked Maria if anybody had called.

"Yes, miss; a lady, to see the master."

"A stranger?"

"Never saw her before, miss, in all my life." I put no more questions. Many ladies visit my father. They call it consulting the Minister. He advises them in their troubles, and guides them in their religious difficulties, and so on. They come and go in a sort of secrecy. So far as I know, they are mostly old maids, and they waste the Minister's time.

When my father came in to tea, I began to feel some curiosity about the lady who had called on him. Visitors of that sort, in general, never appear to dwell on his mind after they have gone away; he sees too many of them, and is too well accustomed to what they have to say. On this particular evening, however, I perceived appearances that set me thinking; he looked worried and anxious.

"Has anything happened, father, to vex you?" I said.

"Yes."

"Is the lady concerned in it?"

"What lady, my dear?"

"The lady who called on you while I was out."

"Who told you she had called on me?"

"I asked Maria--"

"That will do, Helena, for the present."

He drank his tea and went back to his study, instead of staying a while, and talking pleasantly as usual. My respect submitted to his want of confidence in me; but my curiosity was in a state of revolt. I sent for Maria, and proceeded to make my own discoveries, with this result:

No other person had called at the house. Nothing had happened, except the visit of the mysterious lady. "She looked between young and old. And, oh dear me, she was certainly not pretty. Not dressed nicely, to my mind; but they do say dress is a matter of taste."

Try as I might, I could get no more than that out of our stupid young housemaid.

Later in the evening, the cook had occasion to consult me about supper. This was a person possessing the advantages of age and experience. I asked if she had seen the lady. The cook's reply promised something new: "I can't say I saw the lady; but I heard her."

"Do you mean that you heard her speaking?"

"No, miss--crying."

"Where was she crying?"

"In the master's study."

"How did you come to hear her?"

"Am I to understand, miss, that you suspect me of listening?"

Is a lie told by a look as bad as a lie told by words? I looked shocked at the bare idea of suspecting a respectable person of listening. The cook's sense of honor was satisfied; she readily explained herself: "I was passing the door, miss, on my way upstairs."

Here my discoveries came to an end. It was certainly possible that an afflicted member of my father's congregation might have called on him to be comforted. But he sees plenty of afflicted ladies, without looking worried and anxious after they leave him. Still suspecting something out of the ordinary course of events, I waited hopefully for our next meeting at supper-time. Nothing came of it. My father left me by myself again, when the meal was over. He is always courteous to his daughters; and he made an apology: "Excuse me, Helena, I want to think."

I went to bed in a vile humor, and slept badly; wondering, in the long wakeful hours, what new rebuff I should meet with on the next day.

At breakfast this morning I was agreeably surprised. No signs of anxiety showed themselves in my father's face. Instead of retiring to his study when we rose from the table, he proposed taking a turn in the garden: "You are looking pale, Helena, and you will be the better for a little fresh air. Besides, I have something to say to you."

Excitement, I am sure, is good for young women. I saw in his face, I heard in his last words, that the mystery of the lady was at last to be revealed. The sensation of languor and fatigue which follows a disturbed night left me directly.

My father gave me his arm, and we walked slowly up and down the lawn.

"When that lady called on me yesterday," he began, "you wanted to know who she was, and you were surprised and disappointed when I refused to gratify your curiosity. My silence was not a selfish silence, Helena. I was thinking of you and your sister; and I was at a loss how to act for the best. You shall hear why my children were in my mind, presently. I must tell you first that I have arrived at a decision; I hope and believe on reasonable grounds. Ask me any questions you please; my silence will be no longer an obstacle in your way."

This was so very encouraging that I said at once: "I should like to know who the lady is."

"The lady is related to me," he answered. "We are cousins."

Here was a disclosure that I had not anticipated. In the little that I have seen of the world, I have observed that cousins--when they happen to be brought together under interesting circumstances--can remember their relationship, and forget their relationship, just as it suits them. "Is your cousin a married lady?" I ventured to inquire.

"No."

Short as it was, that reply might perhaps mean more than appeared on the surface. The cook had heard the lady crying. What sort of tender agitation was answerable for those tears? Was it possible, barely possible, that Eunice and I might go to bed, one night, a widower's daughters, and wake up the next day to discover a stepmother?

"Have I or my sister ever seen the lady?" I asked.

"Never. She has been living abroad; and I have not seen her myself since we were both young people."

My excellent innocent father! Not the faintest idea of what I had been thinking of was in his mind. Little did he suspect how welcome was the relief that he had afforded to his daughter's wicked doubts of him. But he had not said a word yet about his cousin's personal appearance. There might be remains of good looks which the housemaid was too stupid to discover.

"After the long interval that has passed since you met," I said, "I suppose she has become an old woman?"

"No, my dear. Let us say, a middle-aged woman."

"Perhaps she is still an attractive person?"

He smiled. "I am afraid, Helena, that would never have been a very accurate description of her."

I now knew all that I wanted to know about this alarming person, excepting one last morsel of information which my father had strangely forgotten.

"We have been talking about the lady for some time," I said; "and you have not yet told me her name."

Father looked a little embarrassed "It's not a very pretty name," he answered. "My cousin, my unfortunate cousin, is--Miss Jillgall."

I burst out with such a loud "Oh!" that he laughed. I caught the infection, and laughed louder still. Bless Miss Jillgall! The interview promised to become an easy one for both of us, thanks to her name. I was in good spirits, and I made no attempt to restrain them. "The next time Miss Jillgall honors you with a visit," I said, "you must give me an opportunity of being presented to her."

He made a strange reply: "You may find your opportunity, Helena, sooner than you anticipate."

Did this mean that she was going to call again in a day or two? I am afraid I spoke flippantly. I said: "Oh, father, another lady fascinated by the popular preacher?"

The garden chairs were near us. He signed to me gravely to be seated by his side, and said to himself: "This is my fault."

"What is your fault?" I asked.

"I have left you in ignorance, my dear, of my cousin's sad story. It is soon told; and, if it checks your merriment, it will make amends by deserving your sympathy. I was indebted to her father, when I was a boy, for acts of kindness which I can never forget. He was twice married. The death of his first wife left him with one child--once my playfellow; now the lady whose visit has excited your curiosity. His second wife was a Belgian. She persuaded him to sell his business in London, and to invest the money in a partnership with a brother of hers, established as a sugar-refiner at Antwerp. The little daughter accompanied her father to Belgium. Are you attending to me, Helena?"

I was waiting for the interesting part of the story, and was wondering when he would get to it.

"As time went on," he resumed, "the new partner found that the value of the business at Antwerp had been greatly overrated. After a long struggle with adverse circumstances, he decided on withdrawing from the partnership before the whole of his capital was lost in a failing commercial speculation. The end of it was that he retired, with his daughter, to a small