in the sunshine of affection, what bad, firmly
but tenderly repressed, I might, at this hour,
be an honoured and happy man, instead of
a condemned murderer. But God knows, and
He only.

School-days over, I entered my stepfather's
office. He was a solicitor in good practice. I
had no inclination towards the profession, but
his suggestion carried its weight of authority,
my mother considered it "very respectable,"
and I had hardly turned my thoughts in any
definite direction. It answered indifferently well,
and in due time I was articled.

Coming manhood did little towards emancipating
me from the restraints of home. I had
scarcely any command of money; and this, with a
standing requisition that I should be in-doors
every night by ten o'clock, virtually debarred me
from amusement abroad. Naturally, I mutinied;
and, after a struggle, effected the abolition of
the latter privation, and some, but no considerable,
improvement in the former. Both were
conceded unwillingly and after pertinacious
opposition, originating a series of quarrels which,
after my mother's death, terminated in the total
estrangement of myself and stepfather.

She was always weak, I think constitutionally
inclined to consumption, and died in my
twenty-first year. Her loss affected me
extravagantly, but temporarily. My stepfather's
sorrow was, like himself, grave and
undemonstrative.

I forgot my loss the more rapidly from a
youthful passion which then occupied me for
the first time. It is my intention to speak only
of circumstances which had a direct influence
on my character, and this boy-love may be
dismissed in a few sentences.

I fell in love with a sister of one of my
acquaintances: a handsome, merry girl, my senior
by a year, a coquette by nature. I submitted
to her whims for twelve months, when we
quarrelled our last quarrel and. parted. The
impetuosity with which I urged my suit had
overborne her original distaste for my ugliness—- it
was no longer mere plainness—- and my earnestness
frightened her. She broke off, in spite
of miserable humiliation on my part, leaving me
to digest the pain and mortification of it. When
she hears of my deed (she married and went to
India) she will think she had a happy escape.
Perhaps she had.

I suffered more than common from so common
an experience. It made me doubly sensitive to
my defects, natural and acquired. I brooded
retrospectively, nursed my wounded self-esteem
into embittered egotism, yet despised myself for
my recent failure. I laboured to attain self-
control, and, as aforesaid, achieved at least the
mask of it. At this period the alienation
between myself and stepfather reached a crisis,
and terminated in my withdrawal both from his
office and home.

I was able to keep myself, having acquired,
with a world of pains and at the exercise of an
amount of patience foreign to my nature, the
art of stenography; though not a proficient in
the craft, I had earned money by it. Besides
which, I presently began to write for magazines
and periodicals, at first poorly enough, and with
proportionate remuneration. Long ago,
perlaps in consequence of my stepfather's
prohibition, I had become an eager reader of fiction,
and this, germinating in a feverish, though
diseased, temperament, produced fruit of a sort
which yet commanded a certain price.

Years passed, and I prospered, leading a very
different life from that endured in my former
borne, but not a better one. My stepfather's
example had disgusted me with professions of
religion; I had no check of kindred or friends to
restrain me from vicious indulgence, for my
disposition was not calculated to attract those who
could have helped me fo purer pleasures, nor
was it improved by pecuniary success.

That accursed shame-facedness, always my
enemy, now deepened by a sense of impurity—- I
never went far enough to confound evil with
good—- impelled me to reject kindly advances
made by the better sort of my own class;
among the worst, I had companions, but no
friends. My employers respected my intellect,
but disliked me. Not to exaggerate my
profligacy, let me state that it was rather spasmodic
than habitual, nor ever openly defiant of the
decencies of society. I lived this life for ten
years. When, at times, I longed for a wife, a
home, the recollection of past mortification, of
present unfitness, of my ugliness, deterred me
from seeking them. And, self-indulgence palling
upon my appetite, I presently devoted myself
exclusively to literary ambition.

Four years of persistence produced their
results. I come now to the train of circumstances
which brought me here.

It was at Scarborough, whither I had gone in
consequence of indisposition, that chance made
me acquainted with her uncle. You know whom
I mean by her—- there is no need to mention
names. A watering-place intimacy sprang up
between us, renewed at the uncle's request on our
return to the metropolis. He was an old
bachelor, fond of books and curious about authors.
He invited me to his house, introduced me to
his brother's family. I went there idly, out of
courtesy to him, or out of curiosity. I wish I
had fallen dead on the threshold!

They were hospitable people, dwelling in a
pleasant house in a London suburb, with a
garden and conservatory; its owner had retired
from business on something more than competence.
His family consisted of a son and two
daughters. She was the youngest. What did
I see in her that it should light up such a fire
in my heart?

A' girl of sixteen, with kind, thoughtful,
brown eyes; soft, smooth, fair hair; and rosy
cheeks. That was all. A mere girl, less than
half my aee, pretty, very pretty, but neither
clever nor beautiful. I had looked upon scores
of faces more perfect in feature, brighter in
intellect, without any quickening of the pulse
or more than transient admiration. Yet I saw
and loved her. If I could tell how imperiously