Sinopsis

She is very fair, my little sister. I mean, not only she is good to look upon. I mean that she is white and golden, and always seemed to bring a shining where she went. I have not been able, I see, to set down these few sentences without touching the quick. I have used the present and then fallen to the past. I say "is" and then, she "seemed." And I do not know whether I should have written "was" or "seems." And that, in sum, is my story. We were both so young when we went to Duncombe that even I cannot clearly what life was like before. Whether there was really some image left upon my mind of India, or my father in a cocked hat, looking very grand on a horse, or whether these were a child's idea of what a cavalry officer's daughter must have seen, I cannot tell. I do not think I imagined the confused picture of dark faces and a ship. My first clear impression of the world is the same as Bettina's. A house, which we did not yet know as small, set in a place which still is wide and green. As far back as we it at all, we roaming this expanse; always, in the beginning, with our mother. A region where we played with the infinite possibilities of existence—...