or commiseration for
any lack of principle or any display of selfishness in others. A little
cold, a little reserved, a little lacking in spontaneity, though always
correct and always generous in her gifts and often in her acts, her whole
nature would rise at any evidence of meanness or ingratitude, and though
she said little, you would feel her disapprobation through and through.
She would even change physically. Naturally pallid and of small
inconspicuous features, her eyes on these occasions would so flame and
her whole figure so dilate that she looked like another woman. I have
seen her brother, six feet in height and weighty for his years, cringe
under her few quiet words at these times till she absolutely seemed the
taller of the two. It was only in these moments she was handsome, and had
I loved her, I should probably have admired this passionate purity, this
intolerance of all that was small or selfish or unworthy a good woman's
esteem. But not loving her, I had merely cherished a wholesome fear of
her displeasure, and could quite comprehend what a full display of anger
on her part might call up in her sensitive, already deeply suffering
sister. The scathing arraignment, the unbearable taunt--Well, well, it
was all dream-work, but I had time to dream and opportunity for little
else, and pictures, which till now I had sedulously kept in the
background of my imagination, would come to the front as I harped on this
topic and weighed in my disturbed mind the following question: Should I
continue the course which I had instinctively taken out of a natural
sense of chivalry, or face my calumniators with the truth and leave my
cause and hers to the justice of men, rather than to the slow but
righteous workings of Providence?

I struggled with the dilemma for hours, the more so, that I did not stand
alone in the world. I had relatives and I had friends, some of whom had
come to see me and gone away deeply grieved at my reticence. I was
swayed, too, by another consideration. I had deeply loved my mother. She
was dead, but I had her honour to think of. Should it be said she had a
murderer for her son? In the height of my inner conflict, I had almost
cried aloud the fierce denial which would arise at this thought. But ere
the word could leave my lips, such a vision rose before me of a
bewildering young face with wonderful eyes and a smile too innocent for
guile and too loving for hypocrisy, that I forgot my late antagonist