will be brief for there is in all this a horror that will not bear many words, and I sink almost a second time to death while I recall these sad scenes to my memory.  Oh, my beloved father!  Indeed you made me miserable beyond all words, but how truly did I even then forgive you, and how entirely did you possess my whole heart while I endeavoured, as a rainbow gleams upon a cataract,[D][27] to soften thy tremendous sorrows.

Thus did this change come about.  I seem perhaps to have dashed too suddenly into the description, but thus suddenly did it happen.  In one sentence I have passed from the idea of unspeakable happiness to that of unspeakable grief but they were thus closely linked together.  We had remained five months in London three of joy and two of sorrow.  My father and I were now seldom alone or if we were he generally kept silence with his eyes fixed on the ground—­the dark full orbs in which before I delighted to read all sweet and gentle feeling shadowed from my sight by their lids and the long lashes that fringed them.  When we were in company he affected gaiety but I wept to hear his hollow laugh—­begun by an empty smile and often ending in a bitter sneer such as never before this fatal period had wrinkled his lips.  When others were there he often spoke to me and his eyes perpetually followed my slightest motion.  His accents whenever he addressed me were cold and constrained although his voice would tremble when he perceived that my full heart choked the answer to words proffered with a mien yet new to me.

But days of peaceful melancholy were of rare occurence[:] they were often broken in upon by gusts of passion that drove me as a weak boat on a stormy sea to seek a cove for shelter; but the winds blew from my native harbour and I was cast far, far out untill shattered I perished when the tempest had passed and the sea was apparently calm.  I do not know that I can describe his emotions:  sometimes he only betrayed them by a word or gesture, and then retired to his chamber and I crept as near it as I dared and listened with fear to every sound, yet still more dreading a sudden silence—­dreading I knew not what, but ever full of fear.

It was after one tremendous day when his eyes had glared on me like lightning—­and his voice sharp and broken seemed unable to express the extent of his emotion that in the evening when I was alone he joined me with a calm countenance, and not noticing my tears which I quickly dried when he approached, told me that in three days that [sic] he intended to remove with me to his estate in Yorkshire, and bidding me prepare left me hastily as if afraid of being questioned.