which proved to contain a string of large and very regularly shaped and sorted pearls. I felt I could not bear it. "Are they pearls of my mother-in-law's?" I asked without thanking him, and in a tone anything, I fear, but grateful. Instead of being angry and turning green, as I expected, Uncle Hubert looked merely very much hurt and answered:

"Had they been heirlooms it would have been your husband, not your uncle, to hand them you. Eustace is the head of the family, not I."

"The less said about the family and its head," I answered hotly, "the better, Uncle Hubert," and I felt sorry the moment after.

"I do not deny it," he replied very quietly, in a manner which cut me to the quick. "At any rate these pearls are mine, and I hope you will accept them from me as a token of admiration and regard—or," and he fell back into his cringing yet bantering manner which I hate so, "shall we say, as is written on the fairing cups and saucers, 'A present for a good girl from Bristol.'"

How I hate Uncle Hubert!

I had left the pearls on the harpsichord. This morning I found the green shagreen case on the dressing table; Hubert evidently refuses to let me off his present. But I doubt whether I shall ever muster up civility enough to wear them. 'Tis a pity, for lack of wearing makes pearls tarnish.

I have just opened the case to look at them. This is very curious. The case is new, has the smell of new leather; and the diamond clasp looks recently furbished, even to a little chalk about it. But—the man must be oddly ignorant in such matters—the pearls, seen by daylight, have evidently not come from a jeweller's. For they are yellow, tarnished, unworn for years; they have been lying in this house, and, heirlooms or not, there is something wrong about them.

I have been glad of a pretext, however poor, of returning them.

"Uncle Hubert," I said, handing him the case, "you must put these pearls in a box with holes in it, and put them back in the sea."

I never saw so strange a look in a man's face. "Back in the sea! What do you mean, dear Lady Brandling?" he cries. "Why do you suspect these pearls of coming from the sea?"

"All pearls do come from the sea, I thought, and that's why sea water cures them when they have got tarnished from lack of wearing."

He burst into an awkward laugh, "To think," he says, "that I had actually forgotten that pearls were not a kind of stone, that they came out of shell fish."

February 20, 1773.

God help me and forgive my ingratitude for the great, unspeakable blessing He has given me. But this also, it would seem, is to become a source of estrangement between me and Eustace. Ever since this great hope has arisen in my soul, there has come with it the belief also that this child, which he used so greatly to long for (vainly trying to hide his disappointment out of gentleness towards me) would bring us once more together. Perhaps it was wicked graspingness to count upon two happinesses when one had been granted to me. Be this as it may, my ingratitude has been horribly chastened. I told my husband this morning. He was surprised; taken aback; but gave no sign of joy. "Are you quite sure?" he repeated anxiously. And on my reiterating my certainty, he merely ejaculated, "Ah ... 'tis an unfortunate moment," and added, catching himself up, "the best will be that I send you, when the time approaches, to Bristol or to Bath. I shall be sure of your being well seen to there."

I nearly burst into tears, not at this proposal, but at the evident manner in which the thought of our child suggested only small difficulties and worries to his mind. "To Bristol! to Bath!" I exclaimed, "and you speak as if you intended leaving me there alone! But Eustace, why should not our child be born in your house and mine?" I felt my eyes blaze with long pent up impatience.

"Because, my dear little Penelope," he answered coldly and sharply, "it is the custom of your country and mine that ladies of your condition should have every advantage of medical skill and attendance, and therefore remove to town for such purpose."

"Would it not be worth while to break through such a habit," I asked, "to have a physician here at the proper time? Besides," I added, "I promised, and in your presence, that should this event ever take place, I should send for my mother."

"I shall be delighted," he answered, always in the same tone, "if my mother-in-law finds it worth while to make so great a journey as that from Switzerland to Bath—for Bath is the more suitable place, upon consideration. But seeing that, as I have twice said before, you will have every care you may require, I really think the suggestion would be a mere indiscretion—to all parties."

He was busy arranging the instruments in his laboratory. I should have left him; but I felt my heart swell and overflow, and remained standing by him in silence.

"It is too cold for you here," he said very tenderly after a moment, "had you not better go back to your rooms?"

I could not answer. But after a moment, "Eustace, Eustace!" I cried, "don't you care? Aren't you glad? Why do you talk only of plans and difficulties? Why do you want to send me away, to leave me all alone when our child is born?"

He gave a sigh, partly of impatience. "Do not let us discuss this again, dear Penelope," he said, "and oblige me by not talking nonsense. Of course I am glad; it goes without saying. And if I send you away—if I deprive myself of the joy of being with you, believe me, it is because I cannot help it. My presence is required here. And now," he added, putting his arm round my waist, but with small genuine tenderness, methought, "now let us have done with this subject, my dear, and do me the kindness to return to your warm room."

O God, O God, take pity on my loneliness! For with the dearest of mothers, and what was once the kindest of husbands, and the joy of this coming child, I am surely the loneliest of women!

February 27, 1773.

God forgive me, I say again, and with greater reason, for I now recognise that my sense of loneliness and of estrangement; all my selfish misery, has been the fruit of my own lack of courage and of loving kindness. This child, though yet unborn, has brought me strength and counsel; the certainty of its existence seems, in a way, to have changed me; and I look back upon myself such as I was but a few weeks ago, as upon some one different, an immature girl, without responsibilities or power to help. And now I feel as if I could help, and as if I must. For I am the stronger of the two. What has befallen Eustace? I can but vaguely guess; yet this I know, that without my help Eustace is a lost man; his happiness, his courage, his honour, going or gone. My mother used to tell us, I remember, the legend of a clan in her own country, where the future chieftain, on coming of age, was put into possession of some secret so terrible that it turned him from a light-hearted boy into a serious and joyless man. St. Salvat's has wrought on Eustace in some similar manner. On arriving here, or, indeed, before arriving, he has learned something which has poisoned his life and sapped his manhood. What that something is, I can in a measure guess, and it seems to me as if I ought to help him either to struggle with or else to bear it, although bearing it seems little to my taste. It is some time since I have seen through the silly fiction of the pilchard fishery of St. Salvat's; and although I have not been out of my way to manifest this knowledge, I have not hidden it, methinks, from Eustace or even from Uncle Hubert. The rooms and rooms crammed with apparent lumber, the going and coming of carriers' wagons (so that my husband's cases of instruments and my new pianoforte arrived from Bristol as by magic), the amount of money (the very maids gambling for gold in the laundry) in this beggarly house; and the nocturnal and mysterious nature of the fishing expeditions, would open the eyes even of one as foolish