t seemed to take a--let me say--insane
delight in exposing him to the religious circle in which he had been a
star, and from which he was ignominiously expelled; and in heaping every
possible annoyance and disgrace upon him that the circumstances
admitted. My dear, I think I should have preferred his wrath upon
myself, to being the witness of my brother's miserable exultation over
the wretched man, Parker. His chief gratification lay in the thought
that, exquisite as were the vexations he heaped upon him, the man was
obliged to express gratitude for his master's forbearance as regarded
the law.

"He said he should never forget my consideration for him till death! Ha!
ha!"

"My only puzzle," I said, "is, what can induce him to stay with you."

And then the storm turned upon me, Eleanor.

You will ask me, my dear, how, meanwhile, had Mr. Manners taken my
letter of dismissal. I know now, Nell, and so will not revive the
mystery that then added weight to my distress. He wrote me many
letters,--but I never saw one!

* * * * *

And now, dear friend, let me pause and gather courage to relate the
terrible events of that sultry, horrible--that accursed June.

CHAPTER II.

THE TERRIBLE JUNE.

It was about the middle of the month. Harriet was spending some hours
with a friend, Edmund was out, and I had been left alone all day for the
first time since I came home. I remember everything that happened with
the utmost distinctness. I spent the day chiefly in the garden,
gathering roses for pot-pourri, being disinclined for any more
reasonable occupation, partly by the thundery oppressiveness of the air,
partly by a vague, dull feeling of dread that made me restless, and
which was yet one of those phases of feeling in which, if life depended
on an energetic movement, one must trifle. In this mood, when the
foreclouded mind instinctively shrinks from its own great troubles,
little things assume an extraordinary distinctness. I trode carefully in
the patterns of the terrace pavement, counted the roses on the white
bush by the dial (there were twenty-six), and seeing a beetle on the
path, moved it to a bank at some distance. There it crept into a hole,
and such a wild, weary desire seized on me to creep after it and hide
from what was coming, that--I thought it wise to go in.

As I sat in the drawing-room there was a rose still whole in my lap. I
had begun to pluck off the petals, when t