232 PRÆTERITA-I

being tiresome to her. On the whole, I suppose I came off pretty well, for she afterwards allowed herself to be brought out to Herne Hill to see the pictures, and so on; and I recollect her looking a little frightenedly pleased at my kneeling down to hold a book for her, or some such matter.

259. After this second interview, however, my father and mother asking me seriously what I thought of her, and I explaining to them that though I saw all her beauty, and merit, and niceness, she yet was not my sort of girl,-the negotiations went no farther at that time, and a little while after, were ended for all time; for at Hampstead they went on teaching the tender creature High German, and French of Paris, and Kant’s Metaphysics, and Newton’s Principia; and then they took her to Paris, and tired her out with seeing everything every day, all day long, besides the dazzle and excitement of such a first outing from Hampstead; and she at last getting too pale and weak, they brought her back to some English seaside place, I forget where: and there she fell into nervous fever and faded away, with the light of death flickering clearer and clearer in her soft eyes, and never skipped in Hampstead garden more.

How the parents, especially the father, lived on, I never could understand; but I suppose they were honestly religious without talking of it, and they had nothing to blame themselves in, except not having known better. The father, though with grave lines altering his face for ever, went steadily on with his business, and lived to be old.

260. I cannot be sure of the date of either Miss Withers’ or Miss Wardell’s death; that of Sybilla Dowie (told in Fors¹), more sad than either, was much later; but the loss of her sweet spirit, following her lover’s, had been felt by us before the time of which I am now writing. I had never myself seen Death, nor had any part in the grief or anxiety of a sick chamber; nor had I ever seen, far less

¹ [Letter 90, § 3 (Vol. XXIX. pp. 426-428). The date of her death was after 1849: see ii. § 223 (p. 454).]

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