Wilkie Collins

“ She put her arm round Eunice’s waist and led her to the house door. Her enjoyment of the creepers that twined their way up the pillars of the porch was simply perfection as a piece of acting. When the farmer’s wife presented herself, Mrs. Tenbruggen was so irresistibly amiable, and took such flattering notice of the children, that the harmless British matron actually blushed with pleasure. “I’m sure, ma’am, you must have children of your own,” she said. Mrs. Tenbruggen cast her eyes on the floor, and sighed with pathetic resignation. A sweet little family, and all cruelly swept away by death. ”

“ I thought I should like her at first; she was so kind, and seemed to take such an interest in me. But she said such strange things—asked if I was reckoned like my mother, and which of us was the eldest, my sister or myself, and whether we were my father’s only two children, and if one of us was more his favourite than the other. What I could tell her, I did tell. But when I said I didn’t know which of us was the oldest, she gave me an impudent tap on the cheek, and said, ‘I don’t believe you, child,’ and left me. How can Selina be so fond of her? ”

“ But a rational mind is not a universal gift, even in a country which prides itself on the idol-worship of Fact. Those good friends who are always better acquainted with our faults, failings, and weaknesses than we can pretend to be ourselves, had long since discovered that my nature was superstitious, and my imagination likely to mislead me in the presence of events which encouraged it. Well! I was weak enough to recoil from the purely rational view of all that Eunice had suffered, and heard, and seen, on the fateful night recorded in her Journal. ”