better in health,
certainly, than before, but still worse in temper. And yet, perhaps, I
am wrong: it is I that am less patient and forbearing. I am tired out
with his injustice, his selfishness and hopeless depravity. I wish a
milder word would do; I am no angel, and my corruption rises against it.
My poor father died last week: Arthur was vexed to hear of it, because he
saw that I was shocked and grieved, and he feared the circumstance would
mar his comfort. When I spoke of ordering my mourning, he
exclaimed,--'Oh, I hate black! But, however, I suppose you must wear it
awhile, for form's sake; but I hope, Helen, you won't think it your
bounden duty to compose your face and manners into conformity with your
funereal garb. Why should you sigh and groan, and I be made
uncomfortable, because an old gentleman in --shire, a perfect stranger to
us both, has thought proper to drink himself to death? There, now, I
declare you're crying! Well, it must be affectation.'

He would not hear of my attending the funeral, or going for a day or two,
to cheer poor Frederick's solitude. It was quite unnecessary, he said,
and I was unreasonable to wish it. What was my father to me? I had
never seen him but once since I was a baby, and I well knew he had never
cared a stiver about me; and my brother, too, was little better than a
stranger. 'Besides, dear Helen,' said he, embracing me with flattering
fondness, 'I cannot spare you for a single day.'

'Then how have you managed without me these many days?' said I.

'Ah! then I was knocking about the world, now I am at home, and home
without you, my household deity, would be intolerable.'

'Yes, as long as I am necessary to your comfort; but you did not say so
before, when you urged me to leave you, in order that you might get away
from your home without me,' retorted I; but before the words were well
out of my mouth, I regretted having uttered them. It seemed so heavy a
charge: if false, too gross an insult; if true, too humiliating a fact to
be thus openly cast in his teeth. But I might have spared myself that
momentary pang of self-reproach. The accusation awoke neither shame nor
indignation in him: he attempted neither denial nor excuse, but only
answered with a long, low, chuckling laugh, as if he viewed the whole
transaction as a clever, merry jest from beginning to end. Surely that
man will make me dislike him at last!

Sine as ye brew, my maiden fair,
Keep m