made my life a burden, and spurred my bad passions
while they lulled me in a terrible, enforced repose. I could repay her
favourite, the thing she had always cherished, her feline confidant,
who lived in safety under the shadow of her protection. I could wreak my
fury on that when the protection was withdrawn, as it must be at last.
It seemed to my brutal, imaginative, unfinished boy's mind that the
murder of her pet must hurt and wound my grandmother even after she was
dead. I would make her suffer then, when she was impotent to wreak a
vengeance upon me. I would kill the cat.

The creature knew my resolve the day I made it, and had even, I should
say, anticipated it.

As I sat day after day beside my grandmother's armchair in the dim room,
with the blinds drawn to shut out the summer sunlight, and talked to her
in a subdued and reverent voice, agreeing with all the old banalities
she uttered, all the preposterous opinions she propounded, all the
commands she laid upon me, I gazed beyond her at the cat, and the
creature was haggard with apprehension.

It knew, as I knew, that its day was coming. Sometimes I bent down and
took it up on my lap to please my grandmother, and praised its beauty
and its gentleness to her And all the time I felt its warm, furry body
trembling with horror between my hands. This pleased me, and I pretended
that I was never happy unless it was on my knees. I kept it there for
hours, stroking it so tenderly, smoothing its thick white coat, which
was always in the most perfect order, talking to it, caressing it.

And sometimes I took its head between my two hands, turned its face to
mine, and stared into its large blue eyes. Then I could read all its
agony, all its torture of apprehension: and in spite of my friend's
letters, and the dulness of my days, I was almost happy.

The summer was deepening, the glow of the roses flushed the garden ways,
the skies were clear above Scawfell, when the end at last drew near.
My grandmother's face was now scarcely recognizable. The eyes were sunk
deep in her head. All expression seemed to fade gradually away. Her
cheeks were no longer fine ivory white; a dull, sickening, yellow pallor
overspread them. She seldom looked at me now, but rested entombed in her
great armchair, her shrunken limbs seeming to tend downwards, as if she
were inclined to slide to the floor and die there. Her lips were thin
and dry, and moved perpetually in a silent chattering, as if