One fine summer day that Caroline had spent alone (her uncle being at Whinbury), and whose long, bright, noiseless, breezeless, cloudless hours (how many they seemed since sunrise!) had been to her as as if they had gone over her head in the shadowless and trackless wastes of Sahara, instead of in the blooming garden of an English home, she was sitting in the —her task of work on her knee, her fingers assiduously the needle, her eyes following and regulating their movements, her brain working restlessly—when Fanny came to the door, looked round over the lawn and borders, and not seeing her whom she sought, called out, "Miss Caroline!"  
A low voice answered "Fanny!" It issued from the alcove, and Fanny hastened, a note in her hand, which she delivered to fingers that hardly seemed to have nerve to hold it. Miss Helstone did not ask whence it came, and she did not look at it; she let it drop amongst the folds of her work.
 
"Joe Scott's son, , brought it," said Fanny.
 
The girl was no enchantress, and knew no magic spell; yet what she said took almost magical effect on her young mistress. She lifted her head with the quick motion of revived sensation; she shot, not a languid, but a lifelike, questioning glance at Fanny.
 
"Harry Scott! who sent him?"
 
"He came from the Hollow."
 
The dropped note was snatched up eagerly, the seal was broken—it was read in two seconds. An affectionate billet from Hortense, informing her young cousin that she was returned from Wormwood Wells; that she was alone to-day, as Robert was gone to Whinbury market; that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to have Caroline's company to tea, and the good lady added, she was quite sure such a change would be most acceptable and beneficial to347 Caroline, who must be sadly at a loss both for safe guidance and improving society since the misunderstanding between Robert and Mr. Helstone had occasioned a separation from her "meilleure amie, Hortense Gérard Moore." In a she was urged to put on her and run down directly.
 
Caroline did not need the injunction. Glad was she to lay by the brown holland child's slip she was trimming with braid for the Jew's basket, to hasten upstairs, cover her curls with her straw bonnet, and throw round her shoulders the black silk scarf, whose simple drapery suited as well her shape as its dark set off the purity of her dress and the fairness of her face; glad was she to escape for a few hours the , the sadness, the nightmare of her life; glad to run down the green lane sloping to the Hollow, to the of hedge flowers sweeter than the perfume of moss-rose or lily. True, she knew Robert was not at the cottage; but it was delight to go where he had lately been. So long, so totally separated from him, merely to see his home, to enter the room where he had that morning sat, felt like a reunion. As such it revived her; and then Illusion was again following her in Peri mask. The soft of wings her cheek, and the air, breathing from the blue summer sky, bore a voice which whispered, "Robert may come home while you are in his house, and then, at least, you may look in his face—at least you may give him your hand; perhaps, for a minute, you may sit beside him."
 
"Silence!" was her response; but she loved the comforter and the .
 
Miss Moore probably caught from the window the gleam and flutter of Caroline's white through the branchy garden , for she advanced from the cottage porch to meet her. Straight, unbending, as usual, she came on. No haste or was ever permitted to the dignity of her movements; but she smiled, well pleased to mark the delight of her pupil, to feel her kiss and the gentle, strain of her embrace. She led her tenderly in, half deceived and wholly flattered. Half deceived! had it not been so she would in all probability have put her to the wicket, and shut her out. Had she known clearly to whose account the chief share of this childlike joy was to be placed, Hortense would most likely have felt both shocked and . Sisters do not like348 young ladies to fall in love with their brothers. It seems, if not , silly, weak, a , an absurd mistake. They do not love these gentlemen—whatever sisterly affection they may cherish towards them—and that others should, them with a sense of crude romance. The first movement, in short, excited by such discovery (as with many parents on finding their children to be in love) is one of mixed and contempt. Reason—if they be rational people—corrects the false feeling in time; but if they be , it is never corrected, and the daughter or sister-in-law is disliked to the end.
 
"You would expect to find me alone, from what I said in my note," observed Miss Moore, as she conducted Caroline towards the parlour; "but it was written this morning: since dinner, company has come in."
 
And opening the door she made visible an ample spread of skirts the elbow-chair at the fireside, and above them, presiding with dignity, a cap more awful than a crown. That cap had never come to the cottage under a bonnet; no, it had been brought in a vast bag, or rather a middle-sized balloon of black silk, held wide with whalebone. The , or frill of the cap, stood a quarter of a yard broad round the face of the wearer. The ribbon, flourishing in and bows about the head, was of the sort called love-ribbon. There was a good deal of it, I may say, a very great deal. Mrs. Yorke wore the cap—it became her; she wore the gown also—it suited her no less.
 
That great lady was come in a friendly way to take tea with Miss Moore. It was almost as great and as rare a favour as if the queen were to go uninvited to share pot-luck with one of her subjects. A higher mark of distinction she could not show—she who in general scorned visiting and tea-drinking, and held cheap and as "gossips" every maid and matron of the vicinage.
 
There was no mistake, however; Miss Moore was a favourite with her. She had evinced the fact more than once—evinced it by stopping to speak to her in the churchyard on Sundays; by her, almost , to come to Briarmains; evinced it to-day by the grand of a personal visit. Her reasons for the preference, as assigned by herself, were that Miss Moore was a woman of steady deportment, without the least of conversation or carriage; also that, being a foreigner, she must feel the want of a friend to her. She349 might have added that her plain aspect, , precise dress, and phlegmatic, unattractive manner were to her so many additional recommendations. It is certain, at least, that ladies for the opposite qualities of beauty, lively bearing, and elegant taste in attire were not often favoured with her . Whatever gentlemen are apt to admire in women, Mrs. Yorke ; and what they overlook or despise, she patronized.
 
Caroline advanced to the matron with some sense of diffidence. She knew little of Mrs. Yorke, and, as a parson's niece, was doubtful what sort of a reception she might get. She got a very cool one, and was glad to hide her by turning away to take off her bonnet. Nor, upon sitting down, was she to be immediately by a little personage in a blue frock and sash, who started up like some fairy from the side of the great dame's chair, where she had been sitting on a footstool, screened from view by the folds of the wide red gown, and running to Miss Helstone, unceremoniously threw her arms round her neck and demanded a kiss.
 
"My mother is not civil to you," said the , as she received and repaid a smiling , "and Rose there takes no notice of you; it is their way. If, instead of you, a white angel, with a crown of stars, had come into the room, mother would nod stiffly, and Rose never lift her head at all; but I will be your friend—I have always liked you."
 
"Jessie, that tongue of yours, and repress your forwardness!" said Mrs. Yorke.
 
"But, mother, you are so frozen!" expostulated Jessie. "Miss Helstone has never done you any harm; why can't you be kind to her? You sit so stiff, and look so cold, and speak so dry—what for? That's just the fashion in which you treat Miss Shirley Keeldar and every other young lady who comes to our house. And Rose there is such an aut—aut—I have forgotten the word, but it means a machine in the shape of a human being. However, between you, you will drive every soul away from Briarmains; Martin often says so."
 
"I am an ? Good! Let me alone, then," said Rose, speaking from a corner where she was sitting on the carpet at the foot of a bookcase, with a volume spread open on her knee.—"Miss Helstone, how do you do?" she added, directing a brief glance to the person addressed,350 and then again casting down her gray, remarkable eyes on the book and returning to the study of its pages.
 
Caroline stole a quiet gaze towards her, on her young, absorbed countenance, and observing a certain unconscious movement of the mouth as she read—a movement full of character. Caroline had , and she had fine instinct. She felt that Rose Yorke was a child—one of the unique; she knew how to treat her. Approaching quietly, she knelt on the carpet at her side, and looked over her little shoulder at her book. It was a romance of Mrs. Radcliffe's—"The Italian."
 
Caroline read on with her, making no remark. Presently Rose showed her the attention of asking, ere she turned the leaf, "Are you ready?"
 
Caroline only nodded.
 
"Do you like it?" inquired Rose ere long.
 
"Long since, when I read it as a child, I was wonderfully taken with it."
 
"Why?"
 
"It seemed to open with such promise—such foreboding of a most strange tale to be unfolded."
 
"And in reading it you feel as if you were far away from England—really in Italy—under another sort of sky—that blue sky of the south which travellers describe."
 
"You are sensible of that, Rose?"
 
"It makes me long to travel, Miss Helstone."
 
"When you are a woman, perhaps, you may be able to gratify your wish."
 
"I mean to make a way to do so, if one is not made for me. I cannot live always in Briarfield. The whole world is not very large compared with creation. I must see the outside of our own round planet, at least."
 
"How much of its outside?"
 
"First this hemisphere where we live; then the other. I am resolved that my life shall be a life. Not a black trance like the toad's, buried in marble; nor a long, slow death like yours in Briarfield rectory."
 
"Like mine! what can you mean, child?"
 
"Might you not as well be tediously dying as for ever shut up in that glebe-house—a place that, when I pass it, always reminds me of a windowed grave? I never see any movement about the door. I never hear a sound from the wall. I believe smoke never issues from the chimneys. What do you do there?"
 
351"I sew, I read, I learn lessons."
 
"Are you happy?"
 
"Should I be happy wandering alone in strange countries as you wish to do?"
 
"Much happier, even if you did nothing but wander. Remember, however, that I shall have an object in view; but if you only went on and on, like some lady in a fairy tale, you might be happier than now. In a day's wandering you would pass many a hill, wood, and watercourse, each perpetually altering in aspect as the sun shone out or was ; as the weather was wet or fair, dark or bright. Nothing changes in Briarfield rectory. The plaster of the parlour ceilings, the paper on the walls, the curtains, carpets, chairs, are still the same."
 
"Is change necessary to happiness?"
 
"Yes."
 
"Is it synonymous with it?"
 
"I don't know; but I feel monotony and death to be almost the same."
 
Here Jessie .
 
"Isn't she mad?" she asked.
 
"But, Rose," pursued Caroline, "I fear a wanderer's life, for me at least, would end like that tale you are reading—in disappointment, vanity, and vexation of spirit."
 
"Does 'The Italian' so end?"
 
"I thought so when I read it."
 
"Better to try all things and find all empty than to try nothing and leave your life a blank. To do this is to commit the sin of him who buried his talent in a napkin—despicable !"
 
"Rose," observed Mrs. Yorke, "solid satisfaction is only to be realized by doing one's duty."
 
"Right, mother! And if my Master has given me ten talents, my duty is to trade with them, and make them ten talents more. Not in the dust of household drawers shall the coin be . I will not deposit it in a broken-spouted teapot, and shut it up in a china closet among tea-things. I will not commit it to your work-table to be in piles of woollen hose. I will not prison it in the press to find among the sheets. And least of all, mother" (she got up from the floor)—"least of all will I hide it in a tureen of cold potatoes, to be ranged with bread, butter, , and ham on the shelves of the ."
 
352She stopped, then went on, "Mother, the Lord who gave each of us our talents will come home some day, and will demand from all an account. The teapot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern tureen will yield up their barren deposit in many a house. Suffer your daughters, at least, to put their money to the exchangers, that they may be enabled at the Master's coming to pay Him His own with ."
 
"Rose, did you bring your sampler with you, as I told you?"
 
"Yes, mother."
 
"Sit down, and do a line of marking."
 
Rose sat down , and according to orders. After a busy pause of ten minutes, her mother asked, "Do you think yourself oppressed now—a victim?"
 
"No, mother."
 
"Yet, as far as I understood your , it was a protest against all womanly and domestic employment."
 
"You misunderstood it, mother. I should be sorry not to learn to sew. You do right to teach me, and to make me work."
 
"Even to the mending of your brothers' stockings and the making of sheets?"
 
"Yes."
 
"Where is the use of and about it, then?"
 
"Am I to do nothing but that? I will do that, and then I will do more. Now, mother, I have said my say. I am twelve years old at present, and not till I am sixteen will I speak again about talents. For four years I myself an to all you can teach me."
 
"You see what my daughters are, Miss Helstone," observed Mrs. Yorke; "how wise in their own ! 'I would rather this, I prefer that'—such is Jessie's cuckoo song; while Rose utters the bolder cry, 'I will, and I will not!'"
 
"I render a reason, mother; besides, if my cry is bold, it is only heard once in a twelvemonth. About each birthday the spirit moves me to deliver one respecting my own instruction and management. I utter it and leave it; it is for you, mother, to listen or not."
 
"I would advise all young ladies," pursued Mrs. Yorke, "to study the characters of such children as they chance to meet with before they marry and have any of their own353 to consider well how they would like the responsibility of guiding the careless, the labour of persuading the stubborn, the constant burden and task of training the best."
 
"But with love it need not be so very difficult," interposed Caroline. "Mothers love their children most dearly—almost better than they love themselves."
 
"Fine talk! very ! There is the rough, practical part of life yet to come for you, young miss."
 
"But, Mrs. Yorke, if I take a little baby into my arms—any poor woman's infant, for instance—I feel that I love that helpless thing quite peculiarly, though I am not its mother. I could do almost anything for it willingly, if it were delivered over entirely to my care—if it were quite dependent on me."
 
"You feel! Yes, yes! I dare say, now. You are led a great deal by your feelings, and you think yourself a very sensitive personage, no doubt. Are you aware that, with all these romantic ideas, you have managed to train your features into an expression, better suited to a novel-heroine than to a woman who is to make her way in the real world by of common sense?"
 
"No; I am not at all aware of that, Mrs. Yorke."
 
"Look in the glass just behind you. Compare the face you see there with that of any early-rising, hard-working milkmaid."
 
"My face is a pale one, but it is not sentimental; and most milkmaids, however red and they may be, are more stupid and less practically fitted to make their way in the world than I am. I think more, and more correctly, than milkmaids in general do; consequently, where they would often, for want of reflection, act weakly, I, by dint of reflection, should act ."
 
"Oh no! you would be influenced by your feelings; you would be guided by impulse."
 
"Of course I should often be influenced by my feelings. They were given me to that end. Whom my feelings teach me to love I must and shall love; and I hope, if ever I have a husband and children, my feelings will induce me to love them. I hope, in that case, all my impulses will be strong in compelling me to love."
 
Caroline had a pleasure in saying this with emphasis; she had a pleasure in daring to say it in Mrs. Yorke's presence. She did not care what unjust might be at her in reply. She flushed, not with anger but354 excitement, when the ungenial matron answered coolly, "Don't waste your dramatic effects. That was well said—it was quite fine; but it is lost on two women—an old wife and an old maid. There should have been a disengaged gentleman present.—Is Mr. Robert nowhere hid behind the curtains, do you think, Miss Moore?"
 
Hortense, who during the chief part of the conversation had been in the kitchen superintending the preparations for tea, did not yet quite comprehend the drift of the . She answered, with a puzzled air, that Robert was at Whinbury. Mrs. Yorke laughed her own peculiar short laugh.
 
" Miss Moore!" said she patronizingly. "It is like you to understand my question so and answer it so simply. Your mind comprehends nothing of . Strange things might go on around you without your being the wiser; you are not of the class the world calls sharp-witted."
 
These equivocal compliments did not seem to please Hortense. She drew herself up, her black , but still looked puzzled.
 
"I have ever been for sagacity and discernment from childhood," she returned; for, indeed, on the possession of these qualities she peculiarly herself.
 
"You never plotted to win a husband, I'll be bound," pursued Mrs. Yorke; "and you have not the benefit of previous experience to aid you in discovering when others plot."
 
Caroline felt this kind language where the speaker intended she should feel it—in her very heart. She could not even parry the ; she was defenceless for the present. To answer would have been to that the cap fitted. Mrs. Yorke, looking at her as she sat with troubled, downcast eyes, and cheek burning painfully, and figure expressing in its attitude and unconscious all the and she experienced, felt the sufferer was fair game. The strange woman had a natural to a shrinking, sensitive character—a nervous ; nor was a pretty, delicate, and youthful face a passport to her affections. It was seldom she met with all these qualities combined in one individual; still more seldom she found that individual at her mercy, under circumstances in which she could crush her well. She happened this afternoon to be and morose—as much disposed to as any vicious "mother355 of the ." Lowering her large head she made a new charge.
 
"Your cousin Hortense is an excellent sister, Miss Helstone. Such ladies as come to try their life's luck here at Hollow's Cottage may, by a very little clever female , cajole the mistress of the house, and have the game all in their own hands. You are fond of your cousin's society, I dare say, miss?"
 
"Of which cousin's?"
 
"Oh, of the lady's, of course."
 
"Hortense is, and always has been, most kind to me."
 
"Every sister with an single brother is considered most kind by her spinster friends."
 
"Mrs. Yorke," said Caroline, lifting her eyes slowly, their blue at the same time clearing from trouble, and shining steady and full, while the glow of shame left her cheek, and its hue turned pale and settled—"Mrs. Yorke, may I ask what you mean?"
 
"To ............