hem after having first carefully bedaubed their
faces with the tokens of the measles and I filled her little garden
with all sorts of medical herbs from my herborium. We never shewed much
tenderness towards each other. Only once I kissed her lips; it was when
I left for the University at nineteen years of age.

"Though I deeply felt the pain of leaving my adoptive home, yet I
fancied it would not become me as a man to show any emotion, still my
voice failed me when my dear mother embraced me with tears in her eyes.
Little Ellen stood pale, and silent by her side. I turned to her with
some joke and jestingly gave her different directions about the care of
my zoological collection, (preserved in camphor and spirits of wine)
which I had entrusted to her charge. Then I drew this child of eight
into my arms to bid her farewell. As I kissed her, I was startled by a
sudden shudder which ran through her frame, as if an asp had bitten
her. She staggered back with closed eyes and nearly fainted away. She
quickly recovered however, and next day wrote me a childishly merry
letter.

"Since that day I only once touched her lips again, and then they were
cold and closed for ever.

"How the six years of my University career passed, how I found life at
home when I returned for the holidays would be useless to relate. It
would be a long, and monotonous narrative. Some estrangement arose
between me and my foster-sister, partly through my fault, for science
and study monopolized my attention more and more. From year to year
this strange girl grew more reserved in my presence. Only in her
charming letters could I discover a trace of the old intimacy of our
childhood.

"Her outward development did not fall short of its early promise.

"She was fullgrown at the age of fourteen; somewhat slender, but quite
formed. The small portrait of her which I once showed you has but
little resemblance. Her character, if I may so express my self, was
even more mature than her person, and only betrayed itself in her
movements. A stately calm, an indifference, scarcely concealed for many
things which generally appear alluring at her age, isolated her a good
deal. Then again, when she wished to please, her smile, the gentle and
timid yielding up of herself had a charm not to be described. Few knew
her real value, her genuine upright soul; and among those few, her
brother was not. I was then too much engrossed by my studies, too eager
to solve the myster