nows, and the light he shoots across
the blackness only makes it blacker.

Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi di tempo felice
Nella miseria;

and in the end the biographer with all his cheerfulness succumbs to the
tradition of misery, and even adds a dark contribution of his own, the
suggestion of an unhappy love-affair of Charlotte's.

After Sir Wemyss Reid came Mr. Francis Grundy with _his_ little
pictures, _Pictures of the Past_, presenting a dreadfully unattractive
Charlotte.

Then came Mr. Leyland, following Mr. Grundy, with his glorification of
Branwell and his hint that Charlotte made it very hard at home for the
poor boy. He repeats the story that Branwell told Mr. George Searle
Phillips, how he went to see a dying girl in the village, and sat with
her half an hour, and read a psalm to her and a hymn, and how he felt
like praying with her too, but he was not "good enough", how he came
away with a heavy heart and fell into melancholy musings. "Charlotte
observed my depression," Branwell said, "and asked what ailed me. So I
told her. She looked at me with a look which I shall never forget if I
live to be a hundred years old--which I never shall. It was not like
her at all. It wounded me as if someone had struck me a blow in the
mouth. It involved ever so many things in it. It ran over me,
questioning and examining, as if I had been a wild beast. It said, 'Did
my ears deceive me, or did I hear aright?' And then came the painful,
baffled expression, which was worse than all. It said, 'I wonder if
that's true?' But, as she left the room, she seemed to accuse herself of
having wronged me, and smiled kindly upon me, and said, 'She is my
little scholar, and I will go and see her.' I replied not a word. I was
too much cut up! When she was gone, I came over here to the 'Black Bull'
and made a note of it...."

You see the implication? It was Charlotte who drove him to the "Black
Bull". That was Branwell's impression of Charlotte. Just the sort of
impression that an opium-eater would have of a beloved sister.

But Branwell's impression was good enough for Madame Duclaux to found
her theory on. Her theory is that Charlotte was inferior to Emily in
tenderness. It may well be so, and yet Charlotte would remain above most
women tender, for Emily's wealth would furnish forth a score of sisters.
The simple truth is that Charlotte had nerves, and Branwell was
extremely trying. And it is possible that Emily ha