acting on her
own unaided judgment. My aunt said the same thing in effect when I
appealed to her. Determined not to be discouraged even yet, I undertook
a journey, ostensibly to pay my respects to my father's family, but with
the secret intention of trying what I could learn in that quarter on the
subject of Uncle George.

My investigations led to some results, though they were by no means
satisfactory. George had always been looked upon with something like
contempt by his handsome sisters and his prosperous brothers, and he
had not improved his position in the family by his warm advocacy of his
brother's cause at the time of my father's marriage. I found that my
uncle's surviving relatives now spoke of him slightingly and carelessly.
They assured me that they had never heard from him, and that they knew
nothing about him, except that he had gone away to settle, as they
supposed, in some foreign place, after having behaved very basely and
badly to my father. He had been traced to London, where he had sold out
of the funds the small share of money which he had inherited after his
father's death, and he had been seen on the deck of a packet bound for
France later on the same day. Beyond this nothing was known about him.
In what the alleged baseness of his behavior had consisted none of his
brothers and sisters could tell me. My father had refused to pain
them by going into particulars, not only at the time of his brother's
disappearance, but afterward, whenever the subject was mentioned. George
had always been the black sheep of the flock, and he must have been
conscious of his own baseness, or he would certainly have written to
explain and to justify himself.

Such were the particulars which I gleaned during my visit to my father's
family. To my mind, they tended rather to deepen than to reveal the
mystery. That such a gentle, docile, affectionate creature as Uncle
George should have injured the brother he loved by word or deed at any
period of their intercourse, seemed incredible; but that he should have
been guilty of an act of baseness at the very time when my sister
was dying was simply and plainly impossible. And yet there was the
incomprehensible fact staring me in the face that the death of Caroline
and the disappearance of Uncle George had taken place in the same week!
Never did I feel more daunted and bewildered by the family secret than
after I had heard all the particulars in connection with it that my
fath