worth entered. For a moment he stood silent before the blind child.
The little sensitive face, with its wondering, inquiring look, turned
towards him. Then he gravely said, "Madam, I hope I do not disturb you."
She never forgot that "Madam," grave, solemn, almost reverential.

CHAPTER II

IN THE DARK

"Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night."--BLAKE.

The Gilbert children had a very happy home. In Oxford they were
constantly under the eyes of parents who loved them tenderly, and loved
to have them at hand. The schoolroom was between drawing-room and study,
the nurseries adjacent to the parents' bedroom.

Mrs. Gilbert, a very handsome, large-hearted, attractive woman, was
devoted to her husband, and gave him constant and loving care so long as
she lived. She dearly loved her children; but she thought, though
perhaps she was mistaken, that she liked boys better than girls; and she
had so few boys! Husband and children were all the world to her; she was
happy in their midst, full of plans for them, greatly preoccupied with
their future, and looked up to and beloved by all.

Dr. Gilbert was a schoolfellow of De Quincey, and in his
_Confessions_[1] De Quincey thus speaks of him: "At this point, when the
cause of Grotius seemed desperate, G----[2] (a boy whom subsequently I
had reason to admire as equally courageous, truthful, and far-seeing)
suddenly changed the whole field of view."

And again referring to his leaving school, De Quincey writes: "To three
inferior servants I found that I ought not to give less than one guinea
each; so much therefore I left in the hands of G----[2], the most
honourable and upright of boys."

What weeks and months of anguish must have been passed by these parents,
when the bright little three-year-old child was struck down into
darkness, and the light of the "handsome black eyes" extinguished for
ever. She was smitten into the ranks of the blind; and of the blind
nearly sixty years ago, when their privation was a stigma, an
affliction, "a punishment sent by the Almighty;" when even good and
merciful people looked upon it as "rebellion" to endeavour to mitigate
and alleviate the lot of those who lived in the dark. Bessie's parents
did not and could not accept this view. They saw their child rise from
her bed of sickness unchanged, though grievously maimed; but she was the
sa