them to return to Derbyshire in the late autumn. John and I had been
brought up together from childhood. When he was at Eton we had always
spent the holidays at Worth, and after my dear mother's death, when we
were left quite alone, the bonds of our love were naturally drawn still
closer. Even after my brother went to Oxford, at a time when most young
men are anxious to enjoy a new-found liberty, and to travel or to visit
friends in their vacation, John's ardent affection for me and for Worth
Maltravers kept him at home; and he was pleased on most occasions to
make me the partner of his thoughts and of his pleasures. This long
vacation of 1842 was, I think, the happiest of our lives. In my case I
know it was so, and I think it was happy also for him; for none could
guess that the small cloud seen in the distance like a man's hand was
afterwards to rise and darken all his later days. It was a summer of
brilliant and continued sunshine; many of the old people said that they
could never recollect so fine a season, and both fruit and crops were
alike abundant. John hired a small cutter-yacht, the _Palestine_, which
he kept in our little harbour of Encombe, and in which he and I made
many excursions, visiting Weymouth, Lyme Regis, and other places of
interest on the south coast.

In this summer my brother confided to me two secrets,--his love
for Constance Temple, which indeed was after all no secret, and the
history of the apparition which he had seen. This last filled me with
inexpressible dread and distress. It seemed cruel and unnatural that any
influence so dark and mysterious should thus intrude on our bright life,
and from the first I had an impression which I could not entirely shake
off, that any such appearance or converse of a disembodied spirit must
portend misfortune, if not worse, to him who saw or heard it. It never
occurred to me to combat or to doubt the reality of the vision; he
believed that he had seen it, and his conviction was enough to convince