weight creeps on.

"It does not happen many times that I give way like this; more shame
now to do so, when I ought to entertain you. Sometimes I am so full of
anger, that I dare not trust to speech, at things they cannot hide from
me; and perhaps you would be much surprised that reckless men would care
so much to elude a young girl's knowledge. They used to boast to Aunt
Sabina of pillage and of cruelty, on purpose to enrage her; but they
never boast to me. It even makes me smile sometimes to see how
awkwardly they come and offer for temptation to me shining packets,
half concealed, of ornaments and finery, of rings, or chains, or jewels,
lately belonging to other people.

[Illustration: 163.jpg Jewels lately belonging to others]

"But when I try to search the past, to get a sense of what befell me ere
my own perception formed; to feel back for the lines of childhood, as
a trace of gossamer, then I only know that nought lives longer than God
wills it. So may after sin go by, for we are children always, as the
Counsellor has told me; so may we, beyond the clouds, seek this infancy
of life, and never find its memory.

"But I am talking now of things which never come across me when any work
is toward. It might have been a good thing for me to have had a father
to beat these rovings out of me; or a mother to make a home, and teach
me how to manage it. For, being left with none--I think; and nothing
ever comes of it. Nothing, I mean, which I can grasp and have with any
surety; nothing but faint images, and wonderment, and wandering. But
often, when I am neither searching back into remembrance, nor asking of
my parents, but occupied by trifles, something like a sign, or message,
or a token of some meaning, seems to glance upon me. Whether from the
rustling wind, or sound of distant music, or the singing of a bird, like
the sun on snow it strikes me with a pain of pleasure.

"And often when I wake at night, and listen to the silence, or wander
far from people in the grayness of the evening, or stand and look at
quiet water having shadows over it, some vague image seems to hover on
the skirt of vision, ever changing place and outline, ever flitting as I
follow. This so moves and hurries me, in the eagerness and longing, that
straightway all my chance is lost; and memory, scared like a wild bird,
flies. Or am I as a child perhaps, chasing a flown cageling, who among
the branches free plays and peeps at the offered cage (as