"Years passed. I grew more and more savage; the very power of loving seemed to have died out in my nature. My mother endeavored to drag me into society, but I was surfeited, sick of the world--sick of my own excesses; and gradually I became a recluse, a surly misanthrope. How often have I laughed bitterly over those words of Mill's: 'Yet nothing is more certain than that improvement in human affairs is wholly the work of the uncontented characters!' My indescribable, my tormenting discontent, daily belied his aphorism. My mother is a woman of stern integrity of character and sincerity of purpose; but she is worldly and ambitious, and inordinately proud, and for her religion I had lost all respect. Again I went abroad, solely to kill time; was absent two years, and came back. I had ransacked the world, and was disgusted, hopeless, prematurely old. A week after my return I was attacked by a very malignant fever, and my life was despaired of, but I exulted in the thought that at last I should find oblivion. I refused all remedies, and set at defiance all medical advice, hoping to hasten the end; but death cheated me. I rose from my bed of sickness, cursing the mockery, realizing that indeed: 'The good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket.' Some months after my recovery, while I was out on a camp-hunt, you were brought to Le Bocage, and the sight of you made me more vindictive than ever. I believed you selfishly designing, and I could not bear that you should remain under the same roof with me. I hated children as I hated men and women. But that day when you defied me in the park, and told me I was sinful and cruel, I began to notice you closely. I weighed your words, watched you when you little dreamed that I was present, and often concealed myself in order to listen to your conversation. I saw in your character traits that annoyed me, because they were noble and unlike what I had believed all womanhood or girlhood to be. I was aware that you dreaded and disliked me; I saw that very clearly every time I had occasion to speak to you. How it all came to pass I can not tell--I know not--and it has always been a mystery even to me; but, Edna, after the long lapse of years of sin and reckless dissipation, my heart stirred and turned to you, child though you were, and a strange, strange, invincible love for you sprang from the bitter ashes of a dead affection for Agnes Hunt. I wondered at myself; I sneered at my idiocy; I cursed my mad folly, and tried to believe you as unprincipled as I had found others; but the singular fascination strengthened day by day. Finally I determined to tempt you, hoping that your duplicity and deceit would wake me from the second dream into which I feared there was danger of my falling. Thinking that at your age curiosity was the strongest emotion, I carefully arranged the interior of the Taj Mahal, so that it would be impossible for you to open it without being