in which the embers of a feeling kindled for the moment i descended � as i might have known i should but that he fascinated me with his boyish courtship � into a doll a trifle for the occupation of an idle hour to be dropped and taken up and with as the humour took him when he grew weary i grew weary as his fancy died out would no more have tried to strengthen any power i had than i would have married him on his being forced to take me for his wife we fell away from one another without a word perhaps you saw it and were not sorry since then i have been a mere piece of furniture between you both having no eyes no ears no feelings no moan moan for what you made him not for your love i tell you that the time was when i loved him better than you ever did she stood with her bright angry eyes the wide stare and the set face and softened no more when the moaning was repeated than if the face had been a picture miss said i if you can be so as not to feel for this afflicted mother who feels for me she sharply retorted she has sown this let her moan for the harvest that she to day and if his faults i began faults she cried bursting into passionate tears who dares him he had a soul worth millions of the friends to whom he stooped no one can have loved him better no one can hold him in dearer remembrance than i i replied i meant to say if you have no compassion for his mother or if his faults � you have been bitter on them it s false she cried tearing her black hair i loved him � cannot i went on be banished from your remembrance in such an hour look at that figure even as one you have never seen before and render it some help all this time the figure was unchanged and looked motionless rigid staring moaning in the same dumb way from time to time with the same helpless motion of the head but giving no other sign of life miss suddenly down before it and began to the dress a curse upon you she said looking round at me with a mingled expression of rage and grief it was in an evil hour that you ever came here a curse upon you go after passing out of the room i hurried back to ring the bell the sooner to alarm the servants she had then taken the figure in her arms and still upon her knees was weeping over it kissing it calling to of david it rocking it to and fro upon her bosom like a child and trying every tender means to rouse the senses no longer afraid of leaving her i noiselessly turned back again and alarmed the house as i went out later in the day i returned and we laid him in his mother s room she was just the same they told me miss never left her doctors were in attendance many things had been tried but she lay like a statue except for the low sound now and then i went through the dreary house and darkened the windows the windows of the chamber where he lay i darkened last i lifted up the leaden hand and held it to my heart and all the world seemed death and silence broken only by his mother s moaning chapter the one thing more i had to do before yielding myself to the shock of these emotions it was to conceal what had occurred from those who were going away and to dismiss them on their voyage in happy ignorance in this no time was to be lost i took mr aside that same night and confided to him the task of standing between mr and intelligence of the late catastrophe he undertook to do so and to any newspaper through which it might without such precautions reach him if it to him sir said mr striking himself on the breast it shall first pass through this body mr i must observe in his of himself to a new state of society had acquired a bold air not absolutely lawless but and prompt one might have supposed him a child of the wilderness long accustomed to live out of the of and about to return to his native he had provided himself among other things with a complete suit of oil skin and a straw hat with a very low crown pitched or on the outside in this rough clothing with a common s under his arm and a shrewd trick of casting up his eye at the sky as looking out for dirty weather he was far more after his manner than mr his whole family if i may so express it were cleared for action i found mrs in the and most of made fast under the chin and in a shawl which tied her up as i had been tied up when my aunt first received me like a bundle and was secured behind at the waist in a strong knot miss i found made snug for stormy weather in the same manner with nothing superfluous about her master was hardly visible in a the personal history and experience shirt and the suit of i ever saw and the children were done up like preserved in both mr and his eldest son wore their sleeves loosely turned back at the wrists as being ready to lend a hand in any direction and to tumble up or sing out � heave � on the shortest notice thus and i found them at nightfall assembled on the wooden steps at that time known as stairs watching the departure of a boat with some of 