ink it was happy also for him; for none could
guess that the small cloud seen in the distance like a man's hand was
afterwards to rise and darken all his later days. It was a summer of
brilliant and continued sunshine; many of the old people said that they
could never recollect so fine a season, and both fruit and crops were
alike abundant. John hired a small cutter-yacht, the _Palestine_, which
he kept in our little harbour of Encombe, and in which he and I made
many excursions, visiting Weymouth, Lyme Regis, and other places of
interest on the south coast.

In this summer my brother confided to me two secrets,--his love
for Constance Temple, which indeed was after all no secret, and the
history of the apparition which he had seen. This last filled me with
inexpressible dread and distress. It seemed cruel and unnatural that any
influence so dark and mysterious should thus intrude on our bright life,
and from the first I had an impression which I could not entirely shake
off, that any such appearance or converse of a disembodied spirit must
portend misfortune, if not worse, to him who saw or heard it. It never
occurred to me to combat or to doubt the reality of the vision; he
believed that he had seen it, and his conviction was enough to convince
me. He had meant, he said, to tell no one, and had given a promise to
Mr. Gaskell to that effect; but I think that he could not bear to keep
such a matter in his own breast, and within the first week of his
return he made me his confidant. I remember, my dear Edward, the look
everything wore on that sad night when he first told me what afterwards
proved so terrible a secret. We had dined quite alone, and he had been
moody and depressed all the evening. It was a chilly night, with some
fret blowing up from the sea. The moon showed that blunted and deformed
appearance which she assumes a day or two past the full, and the
moisture in the air encircled her with a stormy-looking halo. We had
stepped out of the dining-room windows on to the little terrace looking
down towards Smedmore and Encombe. The glaucous shrubs that grow in
between the balusters were wet and dripping with the salt breath of the
sea, and we could hear the waves coming into the cove from the west.
After standing a minute I felt chill, and proposed that we should go
back to the billiard-room, where a fire was lit on all except the
warmest nights. "No," John said, "I want to tell you something, Sophy,"
and then we