CHAPTER II.

THE TERRIBLE JUNE.


It was about the middle of the month. Harriet was spending some hours
with a friend, Edmund was out, and I had been left alone all day for the
first time since I came home. I remember everything that happened with
the utmost distinctness. I spent the day chiefly in the garden,
gathering roses for pot-pourri, being disinclined for any more
reasonable occupation, partly by the thundery oppressiveness of the air,
partly by a vague, dull feeling of dread that made me restless, and
which was yet one of those phases of feeling in which, if life depended
on an energetic movement, one must trifle. In this mood, when the
foreclouded mind instinctively shrinks from its own great troubles,
little things assume an extraordinary distinctness. I trode carefully in
the patterns of the terrace pavement, counted the roses on the white
bush by the dial (there were twenty-six), and seeing a beetle on the
path, moved it to a bank at some distance. There it crept into a hole,
and such a wild, weary desire seized on me to creep after it and hide
from what was coming, that--I thought it wise to go in.

As I sat in the drawing-room there was a rose still whole in my lap. I
had begun to pluck off the petals, when the door-bell rang. Though I
heard the voice distinctly when the door was opened, I vow to you, dear
Nell, that my chief desire was to get the rose pulled to pieces before I
was disturbed. I had flung the last petal into my lap, when the door
opened and Mr. Manners came into the room.

He did not speak; he opened his arms, and I ran straight into them,