igned
servant--could have been more than friends in youth? Quite possible.
He is the sort of man for gross amours. (A pretty way I am abusing my
host!) And the supple woman with the dark eyes would have been just the
creature to enthral him. Perhaps some such story as this may account in
part for Mrs. Frere's sad looks. Why do I speculate on such things?
I seem to do violence to myself and to insult her by writing such
suspicions. If I was a Flagellant now, I would don hairshirt and up
flail. "For this sort cometh not out but by prayer and fasting."

April 7th.--Mr. Pounce has arrived--full of the importance of his
mission. He walks with the air of a minister of state on the eve of a
vacant garter, hoping, wondering, fearing, and dignified even in his
dubitancy. I am as flippant as a school-girl concerning this fatuous
official, and yet--Heaven knows--I feel deeply enough the importance of
the task he has before him. One relieves one's brain by these whirlings
of one's mental limbs. I remember that a prisoner at Hobart Town,
twice condemned and twice reprieved, jumped and shouted with frenzied
vehemence when he heard his sentence of death was finally pronounced. He
told me, if he had not so shouted, he believed he would have gone mad.

April 10th.--We had a state dinner last night. The conversation was
about nothing in the world but convicts. I never saw Mrs. Frere to less
advantage. Silent, distraite, and sad. She told me after dinner that
she disliked the very name of "convict" from early associations. "I have
lived among them all my life," she said, "but that does not make it the
better for me. I have terrible fancies at times, Mr. North, that seem
half-memories. I dread to be brought in contact with prisoners again. I
am sure that some evil awaits me at their hands."

I laughed, of course, but it would not do. She holds to her own opinion,
and looks at me with horror in her eyes. This terror in her face is
perplexing.

"You are nervous," I said. "You want rest."

"I am nervous," she replied, with that candour of voice and manner I
have before remarked in her, "and I have presentiments of evil."

We sat silent for a while, and then she suddenly turned her large
eyes on me, and said calmly, "Mr. North, what death shall I die?" The
question was an echo of my own thoughts--I have some foolish (?) fancies
as to physiognomy--and it made me start. What death, indeed? What sort
of death would one meet with widely-open