es, her eyes only grew dimmer and less animated than usual; the
paleness of her complexion became rather more marked; her lips closed
and trembled involuntarily--but this was all: there was no sighing,
no weeping, no speaking even. And yet she suffered acutely. The very
strength of her emotions was in their silence and their secresy. I, of
all others--I, guilty of infecting with my anguish the pure heart that
loved me--ought to know this best!

How long I might linger over all that she has done for _me!_ As I now
approach nearer and nearer to the pages which are to reveal my fatal
story, so I am more and more tempted to delay over those better and
purer remembrances of my sister which now occupy my mind. The first
little presents--innocent girlish presents--which she secretly sent to
me at school; the first sweet days of our uninterrupted intercourse,
when the close of my college life restored me to home; her first
inestimable sympathies with my first fugitive vanities of embryo
authorship, are thronging back fast and fondly on my thoughts, while I
now write.

But these memories must be calmed and disciplined. I must be collected
and impartial over my narrative--if it be only to make that narrative
show fairly and truly, without suppression or exaggeration, all that I
have owed to her.

Not merely all that I _have_ owed to her; but all that I owe to her
now. Though I may never see her again, but in my thoughts; still she
influences, comforts, cheers me on to hope, as if she were already the
guardian spirit of the cottage where I live. Even in my worst moments of
despair, I can still remember that Clara is thinking of me and sorrowing
for me: I can still feel that remembrance, as an invisible hand of mercy
which supports me, sinking; which raises me, fallen; which may yet lead
me safely and tenderly to my hard journey's end.

VI.

I have now completed all the preliminary notices of my near relatives,
which it is necessary to present in these pages; and may proceed at once
to the more immediate subject of my narrative.

Imagine to yourself that my father and my sister have been living for
some months at our London residence; and that I have recently joined
them, after having enjoyed a short tour on the continent.

My father is engaged in his parliamentary duties. We see very little of
him. Committees absorb his mornings--debates his evenings. When he has
a day of leisure occasionally, he passes it in his study, de