she knew, the one she should best like as a daughter-in-law. And here
again the wise folks of the world (and I among them!) would hardly
have said that the step I then took was calculated, according to all
the recognised chances and probabilities of human affairs, to lead to
a life of contentment and happiness. I suppose it ought not to have
done so! But it did! It would be monstrously inadequate to say that I
never repented it. What should I not have lost had I not done it!

As usual my cards turned up trumps! but they began to do so in a way
that caused me much, and my wife more, grief at the time. Within two
years after my marriage, poor, dear, good, loving Harriet caught
small-pox and died! She was much more largely endowed than her
half-sister, to whom she bequeathed all she had.

She had a brother, as I have said above. But he had altogether
alienated himself from his family by becoming a Roman Catholic priest
There was no open quarrel. I met him frequently in after years at
Garrow's table at Torquay, and remember his bitter complaints that he
was tempted by the appearance of things at table which he ought not to
eat. It would have been of no use to give or bequeath money to
him, for it would have gone immediately to Romanist ecclesiastical
purposes. He had nearly stripped himself of his own considerable
means, reserving to himself only the bare competence on which a
Catholic priest might live. He was altogether a very queer fish!
I remember his coming to me once in tearful but very angry mood,
because, as he said, I had guilefully spread snares for his soul! I
had not the smallest comprehension of his meaning till I discovered
that his woe and wrath were occasioned by my having sent him as a
present Berington's _Middle Ages_. I had fancied that his course of
studies and line of thought would have made the book interesting to