The day soon arrived which was to
remove the happy couple from Ashtown
House. The carriage stood at the hall-
door, and my poor sister kissed me again
and again, telling me that I should see
her soon.

The carriage drove away, and I gazed
after it until my eyes filled with tears, and,
returning slowly to my chamber, I wept
more bitterly and, so to speak, more
desolately, than ever I had done before.

My father had never seemed to love or
to take an interest in me. He had desired
a son, and I think he never thoroughly
forgave me my unfortunate sex.

My having come into the world at all
as his child he regarded as a kind of
fraudulent intrusion, and as his antipathy
to me had its origin in an imperfection
of mine, too radical for removal, I never
even hoped to stand high in his good
graces.

My mother was, I dare say, as fond of
me as she was of anyone; but she was a
woman of a masculine and a worldly cast of