itting to her playful tyranny. It costs a woman so
little effort to beset us in this way! A half-repressed word, a moment's
unexpected silence, even an easy fit of petulance on our account, will
serve us as _hashish_ for a long while. Out of the subtlest web of
scarcely perceptible signs, she set me weaving the fancy that she had
always unconsciously loved me better than Alfred, but that, with the
ignorant fluttered sensibility of a young girl, she had been imposed on
by the charm that lay for her in the distinction of being admired and
chosen by a man who made so brilliant a figure in the world as my
brother. She satirized herself in a very graceful way for her vanity and
ambition. What was it to me that I had the light of my wretched
provision on the fact that now it was I who possessed at least all but
the personal part of my brother's advantages? Our sweet illusions are
half of them conscious illusions, like effects of colour that we know to
be made up of tinsel, broken glass, and rags.

We were married eighteen months after Alfred's death, one cold, clear
morning in April, when there came hail and sunshine both together; and
Bertha, in her white silk and pale-green leaves, and the pale hues of her
hair and face, looked like the spirit of the morning. My father was
happier than he had thought of being again: my marriage, he felt sure,
would complete the desirable modification of my character, and make me
practical and worldly enough to take my place in society among sane men.
For he delighted in Bertha's tact and acuteness, and felt sure she would
be mistress of me, and make me what she chose: I was only twenty-one, and
madly in love with her. Poor father! He kept that hope a little while
after our first year of marriage, and it was not quite extinct when
paralysis came and saved him from utter disappointment.

I shall hurry through the rest of my story, not dwelling so much as I
have hitherto done on my inward experience. When people are well known
to each other, they talk rather of what befalls them externally, leaving
their feelings and sentiments to be inferred.

We lived in a round of visits for some time after our return home, giving
splendid dinner-parties, and making a sensation in our neighbourhood by
the new lustre of our equipage, for my father had reserved this display
of his increased wealth for the period of his son's marriage; and we gave
our acquaintances liberal opportunity for remarking