Now and then (not often) my mother would lose her
stoical self-command, and there would come from her an explosion of
jealous anger, stormy and terrible. This was on occasions when she
perceived bat my father's memory retained too vividly the impression
left on it of his love for the wife who was dead--dead, but a rival
still. My father lived in mortal fear of this jealousy. Yet my mother
was a devoted and a fond wife. I remember in especial the flash that
would come from her eyes, the fiery flush that would overspread her
face, whenever she saw my father open certain antique silver casket
which he kept in his escritoire when at home, and carried about with
him when travelling. The casket (I soon learned) contained momentos
of his first wife, between whom and himself there seems to have been
a deep natural sympathy such did not exist between my mother and him.
This first wife he had lost under peculiarly painful circum-stances,
which it is necessary that I should briefly narrate. She had been
drowned before his very eyes that cove beneath the church which I
have already described.
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