20 MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN 



have it reported, on that very night Mrs. Adcock 

 had passed away. Thus, of the four daughters, 

 two had, according to the idiotic notions of their 

 friends, disgraced themselves in marriage ; the 

 others supported the honour of the family with a 

 better grace, and married West Indian magnates 

 of whom, I believe, the world has never heard 

 and would not care to hear : So strange a thing is 

 this hereditary pride. Of Mr. Jackson, beyond the 

 fact that he was Fleeming's grandfather, I know 

 naught. His wife, as I have said, was a woman 

 of fierce passions ; she would tie her house slaves 

 to the bed and lash them with her own hand ; and 

 her conduct to her wild and down-going sons was 

 a mixture of almost insane self-sacrifice and wholly 

 insane violence of temper. She had three sons and 

 one daughter. Two of the sons went utterly to 

 ruin, and reduced their mother to poverty. The 

 third went to India, a slim, delicate lad, and passed 

 so wholly from the knowledge of his relatives that 

 he was thought to be long dead. Years later, when 

 his sister was living in Genoa, a red-bearded man 

 of great strength and stature, tanned by years in 

 India, and his hands covered with barbaric gems, 

 entered the room unannounced, as she was playing 

 the piano, lifted her from her seat, and kissed her. 

 It was her brother, suddenly returned out of a past 

 that was never very clearly understood, with the 

 rank of general, many strange gems, many cloudy 



