The Legacy of Cain

At dinner, on the day of my arrival, and at breakfast on the next morning, she was present of course; ready to make herself agreeable in a modest way, and provided with the nece...

Not long before I left home, I heard one of our two servants telling the other about a person who had been “bewitched.” Are you bewitched when you don’t understand your own self...

I am trying to find out some harmless means of employing myself, which will keep evil remembrances from me. If I don’t succeed, my fear tells me what will happen. I shall be in...

When the subject of the trial was happily dismissed, my first inquiry related to Eunice. The reply was made with an ominous accompaniment of sighs and sad looks. Eunice had gone...

Only two words--but the voice that uttered them, hoarse and peremptory, was altered almost beyond recognition. If I had not known whose room it was, I might have doubted whether...

To-day I went as usual to the Scripture-class for girls. It was harder work than ever, teaching without Eunice to help me. Indeed, I felt lonely all day without my sister. When...

When we stepped out on the landing, I observed that my companion paused. She looked at the two flights of stairs below us before she descended them. It occurred to me that there...

Indeed, I am a most unfortunate creature; everything turns out badly with me. My good, true friend, my dear Selina, has become the object of a hateful doubt in my secret mind. I...

The lady had no doubt looked at me twice. If this meant that my face was familiar to her, I could only repeat what I have already said. Never, to my knowledge, had I seen her be...

Miss Jillgall appears again, after an interval, on the field of my extracts. My pleasant friend deserves this time a serious reception. She informs me that Mrs. Tenbruggen has b...

A little later, on that eventful day, when I was most in need of all that your wisdom and kindness could do to guide me, came the telegram which announced that you were helpless...

When the time of delay had passed, it was arranged that the wedding ceremony should be held--after due publication of Banns--at the parish church of the London suburb in which m...

My first ungrateful impulse was to get rid of the two cumbersome ladies who had offered to be my companions. It was needless to call upon my invention for an excuse; the truth,...

Had the Minister’s desire to see me been inspired by his daughter’s betrayal of what I had unfortunately said to her? Although he would certainly not consent to receive her pers...

We both said good-night, and went up to our room with a new object in view. By our father’s advice we had resolved on keeping diaries, for the first time in our lives, and had p...

So it was all settled between them. Philip is to throw me away, like one of his bad cigars, for this unanswerable reason: “Helena disgusts me.” And he is to persuade Eunice to t...

When people are interested in some event that is coming, do they find the dull days, passed in waiting for it, days which they are not able to remember when they look back? This...

Let me hasten to add that the protest of Propriety was duly entered, on the day before my promised husband arrived. Standing in the doorway--nothing would induce her to take a c...

Her bed remains near the window. My bed has been placed opposite, near the door. Our night-light is hidden in a corner, so that the faint glow of it is all that we see. What tri...

My ever-helpful guide led me to my room--well out of Mr. Gracedieu’s hearing, if he happened to be awake--at the other end of the passage. Having opened the door, she paused on...

When the Doctor and I left the cell together, she was composed, and ready (in the performance of her promise) to listen to the exhortations of the Minister. The sleeping child w...

“If anything of importance happens, I trust to you to write an account of it, and to send the writing to me. I will come to you at once, if I see reason to believe that my prese...

After surprising me, as he innocently supposed, by announcing the birth of his child, he mentioned some circumstances connected with that event, which I now heard for the first...

I have just torn three pages out of my diary, in deference to the expression of my father’s wishes. He took the first opportunity which his cousin permitted him to enjoy of spea...

When they have employed us and interested us, for the greater part of our lives, we bid farewell to our duties--even to the gloomy duties of a prison--with a sense of regret. My...

While my father remains in his present helpless condition, somebody must assume a position of command in this house. There cannot be a moment’s doubt that I am the person to do it.

The long illness which followed this misfortune, and my removal afterward (in the interests of my recovery) to a milder climate than the climate of England, obliged me to confid...

Without speaking, without even looking up, he took out his pocketbook, and began to write in it. Constantly interrupted either by a trembling in the hand that held the pencil, o...

The Prisoner was seated on her bed, quietly talking with the woman appointed to watch her. When she rose to receive us, I saw the Minister start. The face that confronted him wo...

I looked at Eunice. She had risen, startled by her first suspicion of the person who was approaching us through the shrubbery; but she kept her place near me, only changing her...

One of them, let me say at once, produced a very disagreeable impression on me. I have unexpectedly discovered Mrs. Tenbruggen--in a postscript. She is making a living as a Medi...

Eunice ran out to meet us, and opened the gate. She was instantly folded in Miss Jillgall’s arms. On her release, she came to me, eager for news of her father’s health. When I h...

The air of London feels very heavy. There is a nasty smell of smoke in London. There are too many people in London. They seem to be mostly people in a hurry. The head of a count...

Weak as he may be, Mr. Philip Dunboyne shows (in his second letter) that he can feel resentment, and that he can express his feelings, in replying to Miss Helena. He protests ag...

The day of my return marks an occasion which I am not likely to forget. Hours have passed since I came home--and my agitation still forbids the thought of repose.

I am inclined, on reflection, to suspect that she is quite clever enough to have discovered that I hate her--and that many of the aggravating things she says and does are assume...

Here I am, writing my history of myself, once more, by my own bedside. Some unexpected events have happened while I have been away. One of them is the absence of my sister.

Two of the eldest girls were sitting together in a corner, separated from the rest, and looking most wickedly sulky. The teachers were at the other end of the room, appearing to...

When my fondness had excused her for setting the well-meant advice in my letter at defiance, I was conscious of expecting to see her in tears; eager, distressingly eager, to hea...

At our interview of the next day, Mrs. Tenbruggen’s capacity for self-reform appeared under a new aspect. She dropped all familiarity with me, and she stated the object of her v...

On the next day, a Tuesday in the week, an event took place which Euneece and I viewed with distrust. Early in the afternoon, a young man called with a note for Helena. It was t...

When we had left the town behind us, the coachman began to drive more slowly. In my ignorance, I asked what this change in the pace meant. He pointed with his whip to the open r...

He was especially anxious to be careful of what he said to a woman in the Prisoner’s terrible situation; especially in the event of her having been really subjected to the influ...

The event of to-day began with the delivery of a message summoning me to my father’s study. He had decided--too hastily, as I feared--that he was sufficiently recovered to resum...

We secured my unhappy friend, and carried him to his bed. It was necessary to have men in attendance who could perform the duty of watching him. The doctor sent for them, while...

I found him at his writing-table, with such a heap of torn-up paper in his waste-basket that it overflowed on to the floor. He explained to me that he had been destroying a larg...

A perfect stranger to the interior of the house (seeing that my experience began and ended with the Minister’s bedchamber), I descended the stairs, in the character of a guest i...

How long a time passed before my composure came back to me, I cannot remember now. It seemed as if I was waiting through some interval of my life that was a mystery to myself. I...

After having identified my handwriting, I waited with some curiosity to see whether Helena would let her anger honestly show itself, or whether she would keep it down. She kept...

After the heat of my anger had cooled, I made two discoveries. One cost me a fee to a messenger, and the other exposed me to the insolence of a servant. I pay willingly in my pu...

I try not to take gloomy views of things; but I am not quite so happy as I had expected to be when my dear was in the same town with me. If papa had encouraged him to call again...

To leave us (for a while), after what had happened, might be the wisest thing which a man, in Philip’s critical position, could do. But if I went with him--unprovided as I was w...

They all notice at home that I am looking worn and haggard. That hideous old maid, Miss Jillgall, had her malicious welcome ready for me when we met at breakfast this morning: “...

“I must have passed the person you mean, sir, as I was coming in here; and I heard her say: ‘You will find the tigress-cub take after its mother.’ If she had known how to put he...

MARTYRS to gout know, by sad experience, that they suffer under one of the most capricious of maladies. An attack of this disease will shift, in the most unaccountable manner, f...

After leaving Eunice, my one desire was to be alone. I had much to think of, and I wanted an opportunity of recovering myself. On my way out of the house, in search of the first...

Looking at the last entry in my Journal, I see myself anticipating that the event of to-day will decide Philip’s future and mine. This has proved prophetic. All further concealm...

The Capital Punishment of the Prisoner is in no respect connected with my purpose in writing the present narrative. Neither do I desire to darken these pages by describing in de...

My sister is a good deal tired, and a little out of temper after the railway journey. This is exactly what happened to me when I went to London. I attribute her refusal to let m...

When I next heard from Miss Jillgall, the introductory part of her letter merely reminded me that Philip Dunboyne was established in the town, and that Helena was in daily commu...

They had lived together in matrimony for little more than two years. The husband, a gentleman by birth and education, had mortally offended his relations in marrying a woman of...

Eunice passed me with the suddenness almost of a flash of light. When I turned toward the bed, her arms were round her father’s neck. “Oh, poor papa, how ill you look!” Commonpl...

It is, I suppose, generally known that near relatives are admitted to take their leave of criminals condemned to death. In the case of the Prisoner now waiting for execution, no...

At the request of a person who has claims on me that I must not disown, I consent to look back through a long interval of years and to describe events which took place within th...