The beginning of our calamities was, as I said, on the death of Sir Thomas Brandling, my husband's only brother. I have preserved a most vivid recollection of the day which brought us that news, perhaps because, looked back upon ever after, it seemed the definite boundary of a whole part of our life, left so quickly and utterly behind, as the shore is left even with the first few strokes of the oars. My dear mother and I were in the laundry, where the maids were busy putting by the freshly ironed linen. My mother, who was ever more skilful with her hands, as she was nimbler in her thoughts, than I, had put aside all the most delicate pieces and the lace to dress and iron herself; while I, who had made a number of large bundles of lavender (our garden had never produced it in so great profusion), was standing on a chair and placing them in the shelves of the presses, between each bale of sheets and table linen which the maids had lifted up to me. When, looking through the open glass door, I saw Vincent, the farm servant, hurrying along the lime walk, and across the kitchen garden, and waving a packet at us. He had been to the city to buy sugar, I remember, for the raspberry jam, which my mother, an excellent cook, had decided to sweeten a second time, for fear of its turning. "He seems very excited," said my mother, looking out. "I declare he has a book or packet, perhaps it is the _Journal des Savants_ for Eustace, or that opera by Monsieur Gluck, which your uncle promised you. I hope he has not forgotten the nutmegs." I write down these childish details because I cherished them for years, as one might cherish a blade of grass or a leaf, carelessly put as a marker in a book, and belonging to a country one will never revisit. "It is a letter for Eustace," said my mother, "and very heavy too. I am glad Vincent had more money than necessary, for it must have cost a lot at the post." And going under my husband's laboratory window she asked whether he wanted the letter at once, or would wait to open it at dinner time. "I am only cleaning my instruments," he answered, "let me have the letter now." His voice, as I hear it through all those years, sounds so happy and boyish. It was altered, and it seemed at the time naturally enough, when he presently came down to the laundry and said very briefly, "My brother is dead ... it is supposed a stab from a drunken sailor at Bristol. A shocking business. It is my Uncle Hubert who writes." He had sat down by the ironing table and spoke in short, dry sentences. There was something extraordinary about his voice, not grief, but agitation, which somehow made it utterly impossible for me to do what would have been natural under the circumstances, to put my arms round his neck and tell him I shared his trouble. Instead of which every word he uttered seemed to ward me off as with the sword's point, and to cover himself, as a fencer covers his vitals.