if he had wisely distrusted from the first his own powers of
persuading and reforming, and had allowed Clara to exercise her
influence over Ralph more constantly and more completely than he
really did, I am persuaded that the long-expected epoch of my
brother's transformation would have really arrived by this time, or
even before it.

The strong and deep feelings of my sister's nature lay far below the
surface--for a woman, too far below it. Suffering was, for her,
silent, secret, long enduring; often almost entirely void of outward
vent or development. I never remember seeing her in tears, except on
rare and very serious occasions. Unless you looked at her narrowly,
you would judge her to be little sensitive to ordinary griefs and
troubles. At such times, her eyes only grew dimmer and less animated
than usual; the paleness of her complexion became rather more marked;
her lips closed and trembled involuntarily--but this was all: there
was no sighing, no weeping, no speaking even. And yet she suffered
acutely. The very strength of her emotions was in their silence and
their secresy. I, of all others--I, guilty of infecting with my
anguish the pure heart that loved me--ought to know this best!

How long I might linger over all that she has done for _me!_ As I now
approach nearer and nearer to the pages which are to reveal my fatal
story, so I am more and more tempted to delay over those better and
purer remembrances of my sister which now occupy my mind. The first
little presents--innocent girlish presents--which she secretly sent to
me at school; the first sweet days of our uninterrupted intercourse,
when the close of my college life restored me to home; her first
inestimable sympathies with my first fugitive vanities of embryo
authorship, are thronging back fast and fondly on my thoughts, while I