hen 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 a home not to
be urged on him), and means to take his time of coming, if he comes at
all?

'Often too I wonder at the odds of fortune, which made me (helpless as
I am, and fond of peace and reading) the heiress of this mad domain, the
sanctuary of unholiness. It is not likely that I shall have much power
of authority; and yet the Counsellor creeps up to be my Lord of the
Treasury; and his son aspires to my hand, as of a Royal alliance. Well,
"honour among thieves," they say; and mine is the first honour: although
among decent folk perhaps, honesty is better.

'We should not be so quiet here, and safe from interruption but that I
have begged one privilege rather than commanded it. This was that the
lower end, just this narrowing of the vall